Enterprise Architecture - A System Engineering Discipline

Marcin Roszczyk
Enterprise IT Architect @ IBM Global Business Services

Abstract
This article reviews and promotes the concepts of the enterprise as a system and system thinking and it refreshes
the view of the Enterprise Architecture as a system engineering discipline and it intends to emphasize its potential as
a major supporting method in the organizational change management. The article draws upon the assumption that
organization can be perceived as a complex socio-technical and economic systems and therefore system engineering
methods have high potential to its design, development and management. The article, also provides short review of
the Enterprise Engineering, Enterprise Architecture and system engineering concept characteristics and it comparison
and positioning to other IT business management disciplines.

Introduction
The Enterprise Architecture (EA) term is widely used in the IT management world. Many organizations following
the EA hype decided to introduce this practice with the expectation to improve their architecture management
processes and centralize its IT strategic governance. Extensive literature has been written describing the benefits of
EA covering many aspects from IT strategy formulation and IT business alignment, planning till architecture
governance and strategy execution. Nowadays, the establishment of the EA practice in the organization usually
reflects to some extend its maturity and advancement.
From the theoretical perspective it seems obvious that centralized and coherent governance of the IT resources and
its alignment with the business model and strategy should bring mostly benefits, and therefore EA, with its systems
engineering principles, has potential to become the primary method supporting the design and management of a
complex organizational systems.
In practice however, practitioners still struggle to introduce the effective EA mechanisms and to avoid the increase of
bureaucracy, overlaps and conflicts with other organizational management functions. The EA efficiency depends
strongly on its particular implementation, adoption and positioning in the organizational decision process and
structures. Currently EA is not sufficiently standardized as a system engineering discipline. The frameworks
proposed and being iteratively developed by industry (e.g. TOGAF, Zachman), still provide rather high level
descriptions and definitions of the artifacts and processes. As a result, the EA in many organizations, is implemented
just as an umbrella to multiple aspects of IT management and governance aspects such as application portfolio
analysis, solution architecture, service management etc. On the other hand, in many cases it lacks the holistic,
integrated and complete view of all aspects of organizational systems from strategy formulation till its execution.

Organization as a System
In light of the general theory of systems and systems thinking the enterprise can be also perceived as a complex
socio-technical system composed of people, process and technology (Dietz et al., 2006). Systems thinking draws
upon the assumption that the entity can be analyzed from the perspective of an interaction and relationship between
its component parts. Roth et al. generalizes the systems concepts as a larger entities in which we function and
furthermore he defines the organizations as a subsystems of a larger enterprise systems. Roth also argues that

systems thinking is vital to understanding enterprises and to operate it effectively (Roth et al., 2015). The popular
EA framework - TOGAF promoted by Open Group, in its newest version 9.1 extended its scope and now considers
more holistically, the entire enterprise as a system.

Figure 1. Enterprise perceived as a system composed of people, processes, technology subsystems operates in the
context of the external factors

Furthermore, every system can be perceived also as a part of larger system a context in which it operates. The
organizational systems are placed in a wider economic, political and social environment. They are constantly
influenced by the market forces and technological and business innovations resulting in the need for constant
adjustment of the business strategy and organizational capabilities. The increase in the market competition enforces
the companies to merge, consolidate or constantly update their strategic alliances which results in a continuous
organizational transformation. As a result the enterprises endlessly update their strategies, innovate and implement
new business models and technologies. The bigger the organization the more complex is the transformation and more
sophisticated governance and management tools and methods are required to efficiently execute the change. Martin
Op t in his book Creating Value by informed Governance argues that in context of current market challenges
related to global competition, market dynamism and complexity of the organizations there is a need for new
instrument and above all a coherent, consolidated and systemic approach to manage the organizational changes (Op
t et al., 2009).
Nowadays, more than alignment of business and technology it is the fusion and synergy of those two domains that
creates the unique strategic capabilities and competencies of the organization - as Op't writes Technology becomes
part of almost everything and most processes have become at least IT reliant, if not fully automated (Opt et al.,
2009).
A system oriented perception of an organization allow its decomposition into multiple subsystems, layers, views and
components and ease the analysis of the complex relationship and dependencies between them. The popular vision of
the organizational system defines it as a system of systems (i.e. subsystems) of people, processes (e.g. business
capabilities, functions and services), information and technology (i.e. technological tangible and intangible
resources). Each organizational subsystem can be further decomposed into sub-layers and components, for example
the business processes can be decomposed into sub-processes, functions and services and IT layer into application,
data and IT software and hardware infrastructure. Such a methodic description of the organizational system
structures creates a fundament for efficient planning and communicating its changes.
Traditionally, the organizational changes are managed simultaneously although to some extend separately and
consecutively from multiple perspectives: strategy, business models, organizational structures, processes, resources
and operations as well as at the soft layers of behavioral patterns and organizational culture (Fritzneschaft, 2014).
Multiple organizational change management techniques are concurrently applied under projects and program

management umbrella. This approach, although predominant, originates from the times when the technology was not
the core assets of the companys and therefore it lacks systems thinking.
Nowadays, the systemization of the organizations advances from the technology side as more IT systems become
the foundation of the business core capabilities. This need of the system focused approach to management of the
organizational system changes is fulfilled to some extend by the enterprise engineering concepts and furthermore by
the creation of the enterprise architecture discipline, methods and tools.

Enterprise Architecture as a System Engineering Discipline

EA has naturally evolved from the IT world focusing primarily on the IT systems landscape but it is increasingly
being adopted by the business and it gradually becomes the integral tool and method of the business strategic and
organizational planning. With the assumption that the organization can be perceived as a socio-technical system of
systems the EA can be considered a specialized discipline of the system and enterprise engineering. System
engineering in turn is perceived as a problem solving method with holistic an integrative approach (Griffin, 2007),
that looks at the big picture of the problem and all its socio-technical aspects and composing parts (Williams,
2006) (Kapurch, 2007). The common systems engineering definitions summarized by Moser in his book Systems
Engineering, Systems Thinking, and Learning emphasize aspects such as: holistic, integrative and multidisciplinary
view, but also continuity, iterative, phased and top-down approach (Haskins et al., 2010)(Eisner, 2002)(Sage
1980)(Williams, 2006)(Griffin, 2007). Sage, defines systems engineering as a supportive for management in
direction, control, and regulation of activities relative to forecasting, planning, development, production, and
operations of total systems and to maintain overall integrity and integration as related to performance and
reliability (Sage 1980). Furthermore the enterprise engineering and enterprise architecture as a sub-discipline of
systems engineering, are focused on building or changing the organizational systems. They provide methods and
tools allowing problem solving by structured and systemic decomposition of the organizational systems structures
into smaller parts - subsystems and components and analysis of their relationship and dependencies, thus improving
so called business and IT alignment (Nadler et al. 1992) (Lankhorst, 2013). The modeling and visualization
techniques such as viewpoints increase the transparency, understanding and ease the communications between
multiple stakeholders and reduction of the informational silos (Op t et al., 2009).

Figure 2. Enterprise Architecture as a System Engineering discipline

In fact the EA discipline combines multiple sub-disciplines and capabilities. In practical implementations the
proposed EA frameworks provide an umbrella for the various analysis, management and governance techniques.
According to Lankhorst, EA is a a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and

realization of an enterprises organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure
(Lankhorst 2013).
The EA should not be perceived as a management practice but rather a set of engineering techniques, methods and
tools used to support the management of the organizational system. IT glues the complementary practices of IT
management: the IT strategy and IT governance. It can be used as a method of translation of the strategic level into
organizational system implementation level.
At the current stage of the EA discipline evolution it is positioned as a supporting and complimentary function of the
organization. It cooperates with the other well established practices of: IT Governance, ITSM IT Service
Management, Operations Management, and Project Portfolio Management. Especially interesting is the comparison
of the EA with the ITSM as those disciplines have relatively closest range of similar capabilities. However, in
principle EA is positioned more in the strategic and ITIL in the operational space and what is more important the EA
has higher focus on systems and systems thinking while ITIL on services.

Figure 3. ITIL versus EA service versus system focus

EA is on the other hand closely interrelated with IT governance. Conceptually the EA could be positioned as one of
the disciplines and methods of the wider IT governance which in turn is positioned as a subdomain of the corporate
governance. In practice, however the interrelation of the EA and IT governance will depend on the particular EA
framework used or its particular implementation scope. As some EA frameworks such as TOGAF propose to
implement multiple IT governance in its architecture management process.

Figure 4. EA interrelation with IT governance

Third important IT business management practice that is closely related to EA is the project portfolio and program
management (PPM, PMO). The EA very efficiently can complement program management office (Op t et al.,
2009), especially by introducing the continuity which the program management lacks by nature (i.e. even the longterm programs are usually finite initiative. At the same time, most of the EA governance frameworks are designated
to provide the perpetual ongoing mechanism of the organizational change envisioning, planning, execution and
control.

Finally, many authors position EA as a tool to support strategy formulation, planning and strategy execution.
Evidently, EA can provide insight into the organizational strategic capabilities and resources as well as help planning
transformation. In most cases however the current EA frameworks lack the efficient business strategic toolbox and
techniques or at least efficient links to business strategy artifacts.
All in all the EA distinction from other techniques used in management is above all its engineering and system
oriented approach that allow holistic, integrated but also methodic and iterative decomposition and analysis of the
problem.

Summary
The benefits of the EA discipline and its engineering approach in comparison to other IT management techniques
seem more obvious when the organizations are perceived as a complex socio-technical and economic systems. In
modern organizations the fusion of social, information, process and technological aspects is increasing and the
dynamism and complexity of changes requires even more coherent, centralized, methodic and systemic approach.
The EA perceived as a system engineering method seems well positioned to fulfill those requirements, always when
in practical implementation its systems thinking embrace all aspects of the organizational architecture and it is not
focused only on technical resources. EA evolved from the IT world and continuously expands towards the complete
organizational engineering discipline but it still lacks the industry standardization and proven practical patterns and
therefore, in many cases it is implemented as a complimentary practice to support IT program and portfolio
management or as part of occasional IT strategy projects. With its system thinking and high level generalist focus
EA however, it has potential to be considered the central point of consolidation of multiple management methods
and tools especially in the context of the organizational change management.

References
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