An enterprise architecture management (EAM) maturity assessment framework for financial institutions

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the financial industry in South Africa has seen a significant increase in the adoption of Information Technology (IT). With the increase in the adoption of the latest trends and technologies, similar to any other industry, organisations have to deal with the increase in complexity of the management in their technology landscapes. To address the need to reduce complexity and simplify the technology landscape, financial services industries are investing in a capability widely recognised as Enterprise Architecture (EA). Many organisations turn to EA to assist with the alignment of business and IT as well as to reduce the technical debt that increases as organisations grow. While some of these organisations succeed in the development and implementation of EA, many of them fail to manage EA after implementation. The enterprise architecture management (EAM) field developed because of the specific focus on the management of EA after the initial implementation. EAM is characterised by many dimensions or elements, as a result, it becomes a challenge to select the dimensions that should be managed and that are vital for a successful EAM practice. There is a limited amount of material guiding which EAM dimensions increase the success of the EAM practice once implemented. Therefore, this study presents the findings of research conducted to develop an EAM maturity assessment framework that can be used to measure the maturity of an organisations EAM practice. This study used a mixed-method approach which led the data collection process to include both survey questionnaires and interviews and followed a design science research methodology. The focus of the research was a selected case study in a financial services organisation in South Africa and the key findings from the development of the framework were evaluated against that organisation. The main contribution of this work is an EAM maturity assessment framework that can be administered in organisations that want to increase their EAM maturity. Secondary to this, yet seen as vital in the EAM practice from literature and EAM practitioners is the identification of a list of dimensions as well as the identification of components and their qualities that are instrumental for assessing maturity levels.