An investigation into the impact of enterprise architecture decisions on the responsibilities of software developers in companies that develop software

Abstract

Enterprise Architecture endeavours to resolve the complexity of increasingly distributed systems by aligning business vision with IT strategy, which in turn should reduce the overall costs of IT in the business and provide simpler, better and faster solutions to business problems. There are many Enterprise Architecture frameworks. The main purpose of most of these frameworks is to assist with the challenges of managing the increased complexity of distributed systems, aligning business vision with IT strategy and reducing IT costs. Many of the studies which produced the results stating Enterprise Architecture aligns business vision and reduces IT costs, were based on Zachman’s work, and most of the published Enterprise Architecture success stories focus on the benefits provided to the company with regards to IT. In contrast very little documentation could be found that addresses the impact of Enterprise Architecture implementations on the individuals and systems within a company. If the individuals as the main implementers of any strategy are impacted negatively by Enterprise Architecture management decisions, there would be a negative impact on the return on investment of the company. Enterprise Architecture allows the use of overlapping departments’ processes and data, which translates into less development time as system components would already exist. Changes that are made to the Enterprise Architecture result in several additional changes that had to be implemented by the software developers. These changes influenced the workload, roles and responsibilities of the developers in such a way that the development team became negative about the additional work. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of Enterprise Architecture management decisions on the responsibilities, work experience and attitude towards Enterprise Architecture of the software developers in a company that develops software by exploring and describing the nature of software development. Based on the findings of this study, a list of impact of Enterprise Architecture decisions on the responsibilities of software developers in companies that develop software were identified. In this respect, the study identified impacts of Enterprise Architecture management decisions as well as possible solutions to these impacts.