Colloquium: Rod Dilnutt (University of Melbourne) "Enterprise Architecture"

Context: Enterprise architecture (EA) is an organisational activity that seeks to improve business performance through effective exploitation of information and communication technologies (IT). Supporting EA policy and standards facilitates alignment of purpose between business strategy and IT enablement and relies on artefacts describing the various aspects of business operations management and decision-making purposes.  Consequently, engagement between enterprise architects and business stakeholders is critical and occurs between individuals and groups representing the various functions.  While the concept of engagement has received some attention in the EA literature there has been limited attention paid to the actual behaviours displayed by enterprise architects as influencing factors in effective engagement.

Objective: This paper explores in detail the factors, or behavioural competencies displayed by effective enterprise architects and other EA stakeholders in achieving effective engagement.  

Method: This study has proceeded in two phases.  First, a review of the extant literature was conducted producing a descriptive theoretical model of factors influencing effective engagement.  Second, based on a single in-depth exploratory case study 17 interviews were conducted with EA and business practitioners (e.g., architects and other EA stakeholders) consequently refining the descriptive theoretical model.

Results: This paper identifies 11 generic factors that influence effective engagement and a further five factors considered specific to the studied organization.  These factors are presented in a unified descriptive theoretical model categorised according to their adjudged level of influence.

Conclusions: This paper focuses on the concept of effective engagement and offers arguably the first available theoretical model that identifies the behaviours displayed by effective enterprise architects when engaging other EA stakeholders. We note that the developed model has several limitations, and we call for further empirical research on effective EA  engagement factors and validating these factors across different organisations, industries and economic environments.