Enterprise Agility - An Integrated Approach

Earlier this year I published a posting on the purpose of Enterprise Architecture in your company. I explained what the environment dynamics are in a what technologies form the layer of indirection between the business and changing contexts.

Lars Hansen, a student at the IT-university in Denmark took the subject of enterprise agility to an academic level with a thesis called: Enterprise Agility - An Integrated Approach (PDF).

His focal point is agility in relation to business processes and information systems. He analyzes the relationship between BPM, SOA and EA (Enterprise Architecture). He sees EA playing a very different role in regards to agility compared to that of BPM and SOA; EA is taking the long-term enterprise-wide look at resource utilization in the enterprise. In some ways, this long-term view is an anti-thesis to agility, but he sees huge synergies in using EA in combination with BPM and SOA. However, he also finds that something is missing from the equation. To be able to integrate EA, BPM and SOA there need be a shared language to understand the architecture as a whole.

Worthwhile reading!