Abstract
Many enterprise architecture (EA) projects face severe challenges and risks and may even fail. Although the problems are well-known and identified in the literature, the projects keep struggling. It is thus reasonable to ask why they cannot exploit earlier experiences. In this paper, we try to find reasons for these issues by conducting a comparative case study of twelve public sector EA projects in Finland. By using the earlier identified obstacles, risks, and critical success factors as a lens, we show, through participatory observations of the cases, that the problems emerge very differently in different projects, contexts, and the moments of time. This contextuality and temporality necessitates different coping mechanisms as each case is unique and make learning and the application of earlier experiences and practices difficult. We argue that the problems with contextuality and temporality and their inadequate consideration are the main reasons for often failing EA projects.
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Rouvari, A., Pekkola, S. (2023). Contextuality and Temporality of Enterprise Architecture Problems: A Comparative Case Study. In: Sales, T.P., Proper, H.A., Guizzardi, G., Montali, M., Maggi, F.M., Fonseca, C.M. (eds) Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing. EDOC 2022 Workshops . EDOC 2022. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 466. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26886-1_11
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