PrincipleArena

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Contents 1 Principles Arena 2 The project 3 Principles 4 Results 4.1 Papers: 4.2 MSc thesis: 5 Resources

Principles Arena

Welcome on the wiki of the joint working group of the NAF and the ArchiMate Foundation.

The project

The Principles Arena project takes the form of a joint working group of the NAF and the ArchiMate Foundation. We regard enterprise architecture as having a regulating and designing perspective. The ArchiMate project took a design perspective on architecture. The Principles Arena project aims to complement this work by taking a regulating perspective.

Currently, the working group involved in the project is still a rather loose federation of interested people. Nevertheless, several papers have already been written on this topic by members of the group. It is our strategy to use these publications to integrate our ideas, and create a common understanding of principles as the embodiment of the regulative role of enterprise architecture.

The people currently involved are:

1. Guido Bayens, Novius
2. Pieter Buitenhuis, Ordina
3. Louis Dietvorst, Essent
4. Bas van Gils, vts Politie Nederland - Software House
5. Danny Greefhorst, ArchiXL
6. Leo Hermans, Everest
7. Stijn Hoppenbrouwers, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
8. Josephine Nabukenya, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
9. Martin Op 't Land, Capgemini
10. Mark Paauwe, Paauwe & Partners
11. Erik Proper, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
12. Daan Rijsenbrij, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
13. Roel Wagter, Ordina

Principles

By taking the regulative perspective on enterprise architecture, we focus on its ability to steer the over-all enterprise/system development within a large organization (enterprise). A more specific way of expressing this is to state that ' Architecture serves the purpose of constraining design space ' (xAF). In most (enterprise) architecture approaches, this constraining is done by means of so-called architecture principles. Principles are the cornerstone of enterprise architecture. Such principles usually take the form of informal statements such as (taken from TOGAF):

Users have access to the data necessary to perform their duties; therefore, data is shared across enterprise functions 
and organizations. 

According to the TOGAF architecture framework, ' Principles are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission '. Such principles typically address concerns of the key stakeholders within an organization. In this case, a stakeholder may be highly concerned about the organization's ability to flexibly deploy their workforce over different work locations.

Principles may refer to the design of the engineering system as well as the engineered system, and pertain to sub-systems/aspects such as: Business, Information, Application, Technology, Security, Governance, and Culture.

While several sources attribute a pivotal role to principles, a precise definition of the concept of principles as well as the mechanisms and procedures needed to turn them into an effective means still lacks. Both IEEE and TOGAF position principles as a means to guide the design and evolution of systems, while xAF essentially defines (enterprise) architecture as a set of principles. Nevertheless, no clear definition of principles and associated mechanisms and procedures are given.

Even though there are several definitions of principles, we believe there are actually three classes of principles.

• Principles as inherent laws These are essentially properties of (classes of) a system that are inherent to a system (such as an enterprise, an information system, or a software system), and can as such be observed and validated.
  
  Examples are the laws of nature, law of requisite variety, laws of social behavior, etc.
  

• Principles as imposed laws Like inherent laws, they are properties that can be validated. However, imposed laws also require mechanisms to enforce them. Imposed laws typically address concerns of stakeholders. Some of these concerns may be raised by inherent laws which may have a negative/undesirable effect with regards to the system being designed.
  
  Examples are: societal laws, policies and regulations within organizations, etc.
  

• Principles as guidelines Desired properties that are so concrete that they offer guidelines to make operational behavior fit imposed laws.
  
  For example: use your car's cruise control is an advisable property to abide by that provides guidance in obeying the law concerning maximum speeds on roads.

In this project we mainly focus on the formulation of last two classes of principles, while the first class may be used in the motivation of the latter two. We will use the term principles to refer to principles as imposed laws, and guidelines to refer to principles as guidelines.

Results

Papers:

1. D. Greefhorst, E. Proper, F. van den Ham: Principes: de hoeksteen voor architectuur, Via Nova Architectura, 23 december 2007.
   • Het gebied van architectuurprincipes is nog relatief ontgonnen. Er is nog geen overeenstemming over wat architectuurprincipes precies zijn, wat voor soorten architectuurprincipes worden onderkend, hoe je architectuurprincipes beschrijft en hoe je precies tot architectuurprincipes komt. Op het Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2007 is er daarom een workshop over dit onderwerp georganiseerd. Dit artikel is een verslag van die workshop.
2. D. Greefhorst: Ervaringen met het opstellen van architectuurprincipes en richtlijnen bij een verzekeraar, ICT-Bibliotheek SDU, Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2007.
   • De prescriptieve architectuurbenadering heeft als uitgangspunt dat vrijheidsgraden van architecten, ontwerpers en ontwikkelaars moeten worden beperkt door het stellen van kaders in de vorm van architectuurprincipes en richtlijnen. Er rijzen in de praktijk nog veel vragen bij het opstellen van dit soort principes en richtlijnen. Dit artikel geeft daarom een op de praktijk gebaseerd beeld en gaat in op een praktijksituatie bij grote verzekeraar.
3. D. Greefhorst, H. Koning, H. van Vliet: The many faces of architectural descriptions, Information Systems Frontiers, Vol 8, no 2 (2006), pp 103-113.
   • In recent years architecture has acquired recognition as playing a pivotal role in change processes. Despite this recognition, describing architecture has proven to be difficult. Architecture frameworks have been defined to address this problem. However, there are many of them, and together they leave us with seemingly contradicting terminology. What are the underlying forces that caused people to create so many different frameworks? What do these frameworks teach us about the essence of architecting? Where do I start to select or create a framework for my current project? With these questions in mind we set out to perform a comparison of existing architecture frameworks. We ended up with a deeper understanding of the function of a framework, and discovered nine fundamental dimensions that seem to underlie architectural thinking.
4. P. van Bommel, P. Buitenbuis, S.J.B.A. (Stijn) Hoppenbrouwers, and H.A. Proper. Architecture Principles - A Regulative Perspective on Enterprise Architecture. In M. Reichert, S. Stecker, and K. Turowski, editors, Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures (EMISA2007), number 119 in Lecture Notes in Informatics, pages 47-60, Bonn, Germany, EU, Oktober 2007. Gesellschaft fur Informatik.
   • Increasingly, organizations make use of enterprise architectures to direct the development of the enterprise as a whole and its IT portfolio in particular. In this paper we investigate the regulative nature of enterprise architecture. We aim to develop a fundamental understanding of the regulative needs that underly an enterprise architecture, and then take these needs as a starting point to arrive at requirements on the language (architecture principles) used to denote enterprise architectures. We furthermore discuss the process of formulating principles as well as their semantics.
     
5. G.J.N.M. Chorus, Y.H.C. Janse, C.J.P. Nellen, S.J.B.A. Hoppenbrouwers, and H.A. Proper. Formalizing Architecture Principles using Object-Role Modelling. Via Nova Architectura, February 2007. [1]
   • This paper is the result of two experiments conducted as part of an ongoing research effort to formalize architecture principles. The experiment involves a first, and modest, evaluation of the use of ORM and ORC as a means to formalize and ground architecture principles. The experiments involve the evaluation of the use of ORM and ORC to formalize the example principles provided by the TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) and principles taken from industrial practice.
6. M. Op 't Land and H.A. Proper. Impact of Principles on Enterprise Engineering. In H. Österle, J. Schelp, and R Winter, editors, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Information Systems, pages 1965-1976. University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland, June 2007
   • Increasingly, organizations make use of enterprise architectures to direct the development of the en-terprise as a whole and the development of their IT portfolio in particular. This steering and directing is done by means of principles, which are essentially regarded as constraints on the design space for enterprise engineers, thus guiding them in their design efforts. In this paper we study the potential constraining effect of principles on the design of enterprises as well as the guidance designers may receive from these principles. We start by providing a brief dis-cussion on the concepts of enterprise architecture and enterprise engineering. We continue by discuss-ing a strategy to make principles specific and measurable enough to indeed allow them to constrain design space. This is followed by a discussion of a number of examples, taken from real-life practice, illustrating the steering effect of principles. Finally, we also briefly pay attention to the process that may be followed in formulating and formalizing principles.
7. J. Nabukenya, P. van Bommel, and H.A. Proper. Collaborative IT Policy-making as a means of achieving Business-IT Alignment. In B. Pernici and J.A. Gulla, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Business/IT Alignment and Interoperability (BUSITAL'07), held in conjunctiun with the 19th Conference on Advanced Information Systems (CAiSE'07), Trondheim, Norway, pages 461-468. Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim, Norway, 2007. ISBN 9788251922456
   • This paper is concerned with the application of collaboration engineering to improve the quality of policy-making processes. Policies are needed to guide complex decision-making. The creation of such policies is a collaborative process. The quality of this collaboration has a profound impact on the quality of the resulting policies and the acceptance by its stakeholders. We therefore focus on the use of techniques and methods from the field of collaboration engineering to improve the quality. We present the results of two case studies conducted on the use of collaboration engineering in the context of the policy making processes. This result also involves a generic design of a policy making process in terms of elementary constructs from collaboration engineering, which has been arrived at using the emphaction research approach. Before presenting these case studies, however, some theoretical background on policy-making processes and collaboration engineering is provided.
8. P. van Bommel, S.J.B.A. Hoppenbrouwers, H.A. Proper, and Th.P. van der Weide. Giving Meaning to Enterprise Architectures - Architecture Principles with ORM and ORC. In R. Meersman, Z. Tari, and P. Herrero, editors, On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2006: OTM Workshops - OTM Confederated International Workshops and Posters, AWeSOMe, CAMS, GADA, MIOS+INTEROP, ORM, PhDS, SeBGIS, SWWS, and WOSE 2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Montpellier, France, EU, October/November 2006. Springer, Berlin, Germany, EU.
   • Rule-driven systems development emphasizes the use of formalized, declarative rules for the mainstay of its models. The basic underlying techniques are decades old, but now their application, that used to concern only operational system and process definition (business logic, data structure) is being extended to much higher-level items such as policies and architecture principles (we focus on the latter here). When using ORM and Object Role Calculus (ORC) for formal modelling of architecture principles, the underlying logical principles of the techniques may lead to better insight into the rational structure of the principles. Thus, apart from successful formalization, the quality of the principles as such can be improved. We provide some examples and discussion based on the analysis of principles taken from the The Open Group's Architecture Framework (TOGAF).
9. J. Nabukenya. Collaboration Engineering for Policy Making: A Theory of Good Policy in a Collaborative Action. In Proceedings of the 12th Doctoral Consortium, held in conjunction with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'05), pages 54-61, June 2005.
   • This paper is concerned with the potential application of Collaboration Engineering (CE) to the field of Policy-making. We claim that CE will lead to improved policy-making processes (PMPs) i.e. the quality of the policies that are being decided on. Policy-making involves several actors with divergent interests, though a policy can only be realized on the basis of collaboration in which the actors involved contribute the resources needed. However, the analysis to realize a good policy in a collaborative PMP poses interesting challenges: what does it mean for a policy to be good in a collaborative effort? The aim of our research is therefore to develop a theory to improve the quality of policies and the collaborative processes.

MSc thesis:

1. Ron van Nuland, Digitale Architectuur - Architectuurprincipes van de Radboud Universiteit
2. Sean Natoewal, Digital Architecture - uncovering the focus of architectural principles
3. Pieter Buitenhuis, Fundamenten van het principe - Op weg naar een prescriptieve architectuurmodelleertaal

Resources

1. T.H. Davenport, M. Hammer, and T.J. Metsisto. How executives can shape their company`s information systems. Harvard Business Review, 67(2):130-134, March 1989. [doi:10.1225/89206]
   • A major obstacle to the implementation of information technology is the lack of understanding between company technical experts and senior managers. One way to blend both perspectives is to establish a task force that solicits input from management and creates a set of principles to guide subsequent investments in IT. By drawing on 10 to 15 statements that reflect management`s basic beliefs about how the company should use IT, the task force translates the language of corporate strategy into computerese. These statements, or principles, can help speed up the decision-making process and ensure that every IT investment helps the company achieve its strategic goals.
2. P.W.G. Keen. Shaping the Future - Business Design Through Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1991. ISBN 0875842372
3. D. Tapscott and A. Caston. Paradigm Shift - The New Promise of Information Technology. McGraw-Hill, New York, New York, USA, 1993. ASIN 0070628572
4. The Open Group. TOGAF - The Open Group Architectural Framework, 2004. [2]
   • TOGAF is a framework - a detailed method and a set of supporting tools - for developing an enterprise architecture. It is described in a set of documentation published by The Open Group on its public web server, and may be used freely by any organization wishing to develop an enterprise architecture for use within that organization. TOGAF was developed by The Open Group's own members, working within the Architecture Forum. The original development of TOGAF Version 1 in 1995 was based on the Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management (TAFIM), developed by the US Department of Defense. The DoD gave The Open Group explicit permission and encouragement to create TOGAF by building on the TAFIM, which itself was the result of many years of development effort and many millions of dollars of U.S. government investment.
5. xAF working group. Extensible Architecture Framework version 1.1 (formal edition). Technical report, 2006. [3]