Implementation of a continuous delivery pipeline for enterprise architecture model evolution
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SPECIAL SECTION PAPER
Implementation of a continuous delivery pipeline for enterprise architecture model evolution Alex R. Sabau1 · Simon Hacks2
· Andreas Steffens1
Received: 30 September 2019 / Revised: 19 July 2020 / Accepted: 2 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) is an established approach to model and manage the interaction of business processes and IT in an organization. Thereby, the EA model as a central artifact of EA is subject to a continuous evolution caused by multiple sources of changes. The continuous evolution requires a lot of effort in controlling and managing the evolution of the EA model. This is especially true when merging the induced changes from different sources in the EA model. Additionally, the lack of tool and automation support makes this a very time-consuming and error-prone task. The evolutionary character and the automated quality assessment of artifacts is a well-known challenge in the software development domain as well. To meet these challenges, the discipline of continuous delivery (CD) has emerged to be very useful. The evolution of EA model artifacts shows similarities to the evolution of software artifacts. Therefore, we leveraged practices of CD to practices of EA maintenance. Thus, we created a conceptual framework for automated EA model maintenance. The concepts were realized in a first prototype and were evaluated in a fictitious case study against equivalence classes based on EA model metrics and a set of several requirements for automated EA model maintenance from research. Overall, the concepts prove to be a promising basis for further refinement, implementation, and evaluation in research in an industrial context. Keywords Enterprise architecture model evolution · Continuous delivery · Enterprise architecture model maintenance
1 Introduction Since its beginnings in the 1980s [40], Enterprise Architecture (EA) has developed to an established discipline [54,57]. The ISO 42010:2011 defines architecture as the “fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution” [33]. As this definition implies, the EA model, comprised by the organization’s elements and relationships, is a central artifact of EA. Additionally, EA Communicated by Jelena Zdravkovic and Iris Reinhartz-Berger.
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Simon Hacks [email protected] Alex R. Sabau [email protected] Andreas Steffens [email protected]
1
Research Group Software Construction, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
2
Division of Network and Systems Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
has to provide important and up-to-date information of the organization to its stakeholders. There are many different sources for changes of the EA model [18], which contribute to a continuous evolution of the EA model. As our research assumes a project-driven environment, we will refer to projects as example for the main source of changes. Howe
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