Research On Factors Towards Realization Of Enterprise Architecture Benefits

The importance of Enterprise Architecture(EA)application grows in many fields(e.g.development and design of C4 ISR systems,military informatization,etc.),as EA helps ensure the systematicness and scientificity of enterprise decisions.In order to realize EA benefits and to improve effects of EA application,it is critical to identify and analyze factors relating to all-element and all-process within EA adoption and EA implementation.This is exactly research on factors towards realization of EA benefits.However,many problems indeed exist,e.g.(I)cognition on EA seems not so systematic or precise;(II)effects of management towards realization of EA benefits appear not so satisfactory in practice;(III)systematic understanding on EA success factors keeps absent;(IV)scientific guidance of EA adoption remains unavailable.Targeting at these existing problems,this thesis researches the following points.Firstly,this thesis analyzes and synthesizes realizations of EA benefits in practice.This thesis details the numerous variations and reflections of EA benefits.Then this thesis summarizes characteristics as well as connections of EA benefits.After that,this thesis analyzes empirically the differences and similarities between EA benefits.With desirability and realizability,the cognitive divergence of EA benefits is revealed.Secondly,this thesis reveal that it is necessary to keep kind of soft-control towards realization of EA benefits.Based on measurability(of EA benefits)and traceability(of realization of EA benefits),some surprising findings of control as well as controllability(relating to realization of EA benefits)is highlighted.Definitely,such kind of analysis is provided within a close observation on state-of-the-art in industry,on the logic causes-reasons,and corresponding managerial solutions.Thirdly,this thesis reveals,within EA challenge model,that seven challenges(through three media,i.e.,source of justification,process of EA adoption and implementation,source of commitment)are still challenging realization of EA benefits.However,regarding those challenges,it is quite a surprise that majority challenges concern political-business-people issues,other than technical issues.Furthermore,this thesis analyzes and synthesizes EA success factors.With a lens of life-cycle length and by a systematic literature review,this thesis collects and distills in total thirty-three EA success factors within four facets.Following,EA success factors model is constructed to define the dependencies between EA success factors and EA success.Further,this part of work highlights some findings,which emerges within an expert-based survey.Next,this thesis provided EA applicability model to better conceptualize and operationalize EA adoption.Based on Contingency Theory and with the purpose of theorizing and conceptualizing “EA applicability”,this thesis collects,analyzes,and synthesizes qualitative empirical data.Given “EA applicability” as dependent variable,this thesis explores the corresponding independent variables,as well as the connections between dependent variable and independent variables.This part of work suggests that five organizational factors(i.e.,purposeful change as enterprise strategy;dependency of business realization on IT applications;complexity of business and IT applications;maturity level of corporate governance,IT governance and EA management;people-organizational issues)indeed affects and even determines EA applicability,through two media-factors(i.e.,EA legitimacy and EA preparedness).Practically,these organizational factors are quite informative for decisions of EA adoption.Besides the above five points,another two supplementaries are provided as well.The first point is a theoretical base and question-analyzing framework.This thesis summarizes concepts,and understandings of enterprise,EA and EA benefits.In addition,understandings of research on factors towards EA benefits are described with research contents attached.Further,conceptual question-analyzing framework is provided to help understand research questions,at which this thesis targets within research on factors towards EA benefits.The second point is a comprehensive case study of EA application.With “Big Data” strategy,this thesis provides a comprehensive illustrative case study of EA application to do informatization programming.In this part of research,EA adoption decision-process model,EA implementation process model,as well as the concrete programming steps are detailed.In parallel,issues relating to management towards realization of EA benefits are discussed.It is also revealed in this thesis that EA application in national defense field should be rather typical “first-head” engineering,a sort of typical systems engineering.EA application needs supports,commitments and all-step involvements of top leaders.From the perspective of whole process of EA application,issues relating to top leaders seems to be the most important things;however,surprisingly,technique issues turn out to be secondary and relatively less significant.Reflectively,it is required to develop a “business-drive-technology” strategy,which means that in EA application scenarios architects should know-act very well business-people socio-cultural-political issues.Business-people socio-cultural-political issues(e.g.,communications,coordination,comprehensive trade-offs between stakeholders,etc.)call for careful professional management,including things from configuration,customization to controlled balance and even compromise.Thus,EA application appears not only a technical work,but also a “management-intensive” one.It could be concluded that in order to realize EA benefits,EA application should be managed,configured,customized and controlled according to dynamic EA application scenarios.And the management,configuration,customization and control relates to many works,including: balance between/among stakeholders regarding EA benefits,control of realization of EA benefits,management of challenges,management of EA success factors,management of EA adoption,the selection of approaches in EA modeling and analyzing,etc.