Challenges of Capturing Design Rationales in Enterprise Architecture: A case study

In earlier work we introduced an approach that aims in the understanding of the reasoning that lies behind Enterprise Architecture (EA) designs. This EA rationalization approach helps uncover design constraints, follow good practices while avoid bad ones, and more. However, up to now, our assumptions regarding the usefulness of our approach were largely theory based. In this paper, we use a real life case study in a Luxembourgish Research and Technology Organization (RTO) to identify from a practical point of view why EA rationalization is useful. Using a business process on budget forecasting as a focal point, firstly we analyze what has been designed. Thereafter, we analyze the reasoning behind these designs, and show how this reasoning is not expressed with current EA design techniques. Finally, we derive a set of challenges that an EA rationalization approach should face up to.