Enterprise Architecture Design Principles and Business-Driven IT Management

The strategic role of IT and its significance throughout the organization increases in environments characterized by complexity, variety and change. Hence IT management must deal with uncertainties and with different, conflicting and ever changing demands. In this sense Enterprise Architecture is playing an increasingly important role in improving IT management practice. This paper presents architectural design principles that strive to create and maintain alignment in a dynamic and uncertain business environment. Two crucial architectural aspects will be highlighted: (1) the delineation of the information systems, (2) the choice of interoperability principle. A case from Swedish Industry is used to demonstrate the application of the principles. In the paper we argue that the choice of principles has an significant impact on operational as well as strategic alignment. The larger, heterogeneous, and dynamic the business are, the more crucial are the issues of information systems delineation and interoperability.