Type of Publication: Article in Collected Edition

CONCEPTUALIZING EA CITIES: TOWARDS VISUALIZING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES AS CITIES

Author(s):

Rehring, K.; Brée, T.; Gulden, J.; Bredenfeld, L.

Title of Anthology:

Proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS)

Location(s):

Stockholm & Uppsala, Sweden

Publication Date:

2019

Language:

English

Keywords:

Enterprise Architecture Management, Enterprise Architecture Visualization, City Metaphor

Link to complete version:

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=ecis2019_rp

Citation:

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Abstract

Enterprise Architectures (EAs) are commonly visualized in the form of text, numbers, tables, graphs, models, and diagrams. These information visualization types are used to describe EAs in today’s organizations, but often lack an intuitive representation. In this paper, we provide another form of EA visualization utilizing the city metaphor. This spatial metaphor is suitable for visualizing complex information structures and potentially facilitates easy understanding of EAs, especially for non-IT staff. Based on a literature review and three rounds of open card sorting, we mapped eleven classes of EA objects to city elements. Our results enabled us to develop a formal language that allows an implementable and human-readable specification of various views, which we call EA City. We created an early stage 3D EA City prototype to demonstrate its applicability. Our model provides a solid foundation for further work on the city metaphor in the context of EA visualization.