Enterprise Architecture: What Did We Study?

Abstract

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to improve business and IT alignment, and is used in the majority of large companies. However, despite that EA was established as an independent discipline long ago, a commonly accepted “big picture” in EA research is still missing. As a result, the scope of the EA discipline is vague, the extent of diversity in EA publications is poorly understood and the progression of the EA research stream over time is unclear. In this paper I conduct a comprehensive EA literature review covering 1075 publications aiming to structure, clarify and consolidate the whole EA research stream. I analyze the distribution of the EA research stream by time, source, research methodology and attitude, code all the issues discussed in EA publications into 42 narrow EA-related topics and 11 broader themes, establish the conceptual relationship between them and present a picture of the EA discipline “on a page”. Moreover, I classify all EA-related topics into four categories according to their lifecycles helping future EA researchers to better understand the evolution of the EA discipline and make the maximum contribution to it.