Patterns of Evolution in Enterprise Architecture Information Models

Enterprise architecture (EA) models are key artifacts for managing the development of the enterprise and in particular its IT landscape, i.e. are central to EA management. The EA models are used to document the current state of the enterprise according to the information demands of EA stakeholders. These demands are reflected in the architecture models' corresponding meta-models, the EA information models. With rising maturity of EA management the group of stakeholders as well as the stakeholders' information demands change. Further, EA management is embedded into a changing environment, where recent regulatory constraints on the one hand and novel technological paradigms keep changing the perspective on the enterprise. Consequently, the EA information models are adapted to accommodate the changed requirements. In this paper, we revisit existing approaches in the area of EA information mode-ling and discuss the identified lack of support regarding information model evolution. To close the experienced gap, we discuss recurring patterns of adaptation that we observed in the field of EA modeling. 1 Motivation Enterprise Architecture (EA) management takes an overarching and embracing perspective on the enterprise to identify and leverage advantages that would otherwise be lost in the silos of isolated management activities or organizational islands. EA management for example brings together information from business process management with information from IT infrastructure management to facilitate discussions on the impact of hardware outages on the business continuity. Models of the EA are used to support the management activities and cover manifold different aspects of the enterprise. In particular, the models support documentation, communication, and analysis of the current state of the EA as well as the development of planned states. The corresponding meta-models, called EA information models, define the concepts relevant for modeling the EA and supply a consistent terminology ranging from business concepts to infrastructure elements. EA management is enterprise-specific in particular regarding the coverage of the enterprise. The organizational setup and the empowerment of the EA management activity greatly influences which aspects of the enterprise can be considered from a holistic perspective, and which are (currently) out-of-scope. Both covering the concepts, which are in the ou-treach of the current EA management, in the EA information model and constraining the information model to only these concepts are two critical success factors. On the one hand 1383