Constructing Evolvable Enterprise Implementations

Abstract

Contemporary organizations are operating in increasingly volatile environments. Hence, organizations must be agile in order to be able to quickly adapt to changes in its environment. This may be a complex process, since a change to one organizational unit may affect other units. Given the increasing complexity of organizations, it has been argued that organizations should be purposefully designed. Enterprise architecture frameworks provide guidance for the design of organizational structures. Unfortunately, current enterprise architecture frameworks have a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive nature and do not seem to have a strong theoretical foundation. In software engineering literature, the Normalized Systems approach has recently been proposed to provide such deterministic design principles for the modular structure of software. The Normalized Systems approach is based on the systems theoretic concept of stability to ensure the evolvability of information systems. In our PhD research, we explore the feasibility of extending the Normalized Systems design principles to the field of enterprise architecture. Our results show that such approach is feasible and illustrate how the systems theoretic concept of stability can be used on the organizational level.