THE SYSTEMIC ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE METHODOLOGY (SEAM) Business and IT Alignment for Competitveness

For companies to be more competitive, they need to align their business and IT resources. Enterprise Architecture is the discipline whose purpose is to align more effectively the strategies of enterprises together with their processes and their resources (business and IT). Enterprise architecture is complex because it involves different types of practitioners with different goals and practices during the lifecycle of the required changes. Enterprise Architecture can be seen as an art and is largely based on experience. But Enterprise Architecture does not have strong theoretical foundations. As a consequence, it is difficult to teach, difficult to apply, and does not have true computer-supported tool. This lack of tool is unfortunate as such tools would make the discipline much more practical. This paper presents how system sciences, by defining the concept of the systemic paradigm, can provide these theoretical foundations. It then gives a concrete example of the application of these foundations by presenting the SEAM paradigm. With the systemic paradigm, the enterprise architects can improve their understanding of the existing methodologies, and thus find explanations for the practical problems they encounter. With the SEAM paradigm, architects can use a methodology that alleviates most of these practical problems and can be supported by a tool.