Socio-technic dependency and rationale models for the enterprise architecture management function

Abstract

Enterprises are complex socio-technical system, whose management can be considered a challenging task. Especially against the background of intricate relationships, dependencies, and contributions that link social actors and technical components, the design of an effective enterprise architecture (EA) management function is not easy to accomplish. While for modeling social dependencies on the one hand and for modeling technical dependencies in the context of an EA on the other hand, well established approaches exist, yet no attempt has been undertaken to bring together the disciplines of modeling. Regarding such an embracing modeling approach as a valuable contribution for designing organization-specific EA management functions, this paper closes the aforementioned gap by combining facilities for intensional and technical dependency modeling. The integrated model is thereby devised along an anonymized practice case. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.