Integration of Product-IT into Enterprise Architecture : a metod for participatory Business and IT Alignment

Sammanfattning: Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a practice for planning, representation and design of IT components and resources (Enterprise-IT) in an organization. In the context of digital transformation (DT), companies are exposed to various sorts of opportu-nities, both technological and business. Huge potential for value generation lies in Product-IT – built-in software and digital services enhancing the products, which is currently considered separately from Enterprise-IT. Integrated consideration of Product-IT and Enterprise-IT is hindered by various challenging factors, such as the mismatch between agile and traditional modes of IT development and mainte-nance, disjointed technology platforms and overall lack of methodological support to address Product-IT in a coherent way. This thesis proposes a method for Prod-uct-IT inclusive EA, which aims to support DT. The proposed method is the central artifact of the applied design science research, which was grounded and evaluated both theoretically and empirically (through literature reviews, an industrial case study and interviews). The proposed method has several parts: key concepts for product-IT inclusive EA modeling, expanding the traditional set of EA concepts; a set of focal areas to facilitate integrated modeling and analysis of Product-IT and Enterprise-IT; and a set of recommendations for participatory modeling of the pro-posed focal areas by relevant stakeholders.