A Comparison of Practitioner and Researcher Definitions of Enterprise Architecture using an Interpretation Method

The term enterprise architecture has been in use for almost thirty years if the seminal paper (published in 1987) by Zachman is taken as its starting point. As a scientific area of study this time span is relatively short but for the practitioner it could be a time long enough for the original interest to wane. Gartner’s research reflects that the practitioner interest is growing and the development of enterprise architecture frameworks, such as the 2009 update of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), shows the active development of enterprise architecture frameworks. In this paper two enterprise architecture definitions that is representative of the practitioner and the researcher position are compared to the definitions of the Zachman Framework and TOGAF to determine the agreement between practitioner and researcher thought on enterprise architecture. The comparison is conducted via an interpretation method that is based on hermeneutic phenomenology. The results indicate a correspondence between practitioner and researcher views that opens the way for co-operative research.