Using Orientor Theory for Coherent Decision Making for Application Landscape Design

More than 30 years have passed since the first enterprise architecture (EA) management framework has been published. While the field has reached a certain maturity in science and practice, a paradigm shift is just beginning. The emerging trend to regard an enterprise as complex adaptive system might allow redefining and achieving the holistic nature of EA management approaches. Thereby, the focus on static aspects of the architecture might be extended by taking behavioral aspects into account. In this paper, we argue (1) that currently available EA management approaches fall short in achieving the desired holism, i.e. viewing the system as a whole, (2) apply orientor theory to support decision making by deriving coordinated goals and principles for application landscape design and (3) show how a system-of-systems approach of applied orientor theory could look like. We conclude the paper by sketching out an appropriate research agenda. 1 Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany – [email protected] [email protected]