University of Southern Denmark
The University of Southern Denmark (Danish: Syddansk Universitet) is with around 30,000 students and 4,000 employees Denmarks third largest university. The university is allocated on six campi with its main campus in Odense.
Within the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute of the Technical Faculty, Simon Hacks is researching on the conceptualization of EA Debts and EA Smells as well as developing tool support to automatize the analysis.
Recent Publications
Daoudi, Sara; Larsson, Malin; Hacks, Simon; Jung, Jürgen
Discovering and Assessing Enterprise Architecture Debts Journal Article
In: Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly, no. 35, pp. 1–29, 2023.
@article{daoudi2023discovering,
title = {Discovering and Assessing Enterprise Architecture Debts},
author = {Sara Daoudi and Malin Larsson and Simon Hacks and Jürgen Jung},
doi = {10.7250/csimq.2023-35.01},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-08-01},
urldate = {2023-01-01},
journal = {Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly},
number = {35},
pages = {1–29},
abstract = {The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) Debts has been coined to grasp the difference between the actual state of the EA and its hypothetical, optimal state. So far, different methods have been proposed to identify such EA Debts in organizations. However, these methods either are based on the transfer of known concepts from other domains to EA or are time and resource intensive. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose an approach that uses an interview format to identify EA Debts in enterprises and a method that allows a qualitative assessment of identified EA Debts. The proposed approach is supported by the designed framework that consists of an interview format and a process for determining thresholds of certain EA Smells.},
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The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) Debts has been coined to grasp the difference between the actual state of the EA and its hypothetical, optimal state. So far, different methods have been proposed to identify such EA Debts in organizations. However, these methods either are based on the transfer of known concepts from other domains to EA or are time and resource intensive. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose an approach that uses an interview format to identify EA Debts in enterprises and a method that allows a qualitative assessment of identified EA Debts. The proposed approach is supported by the designed framework that consists of an interview format and a process for determining thresholds of certain EA Smells.
Hacks, Simon; Jung, Jürgen
A First Validation of the Enterprise Architecture Debts Concept Proceedings Article
In: Bork, Dominik; Proper, Henderik A. (Ed.): International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support, pp. 217-226, Springer, 2023.
@inproceedings{nokey,
title = {A First Validation of the Enterprise Architecture Debts Concept},
author = {Simon Hacks and Jürgen Jung},
editor = {Dominik Bork and Henderik A. Proper },
doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-34241-7_15},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-06-12},
urldate = {2023-06-12},
booktitle = {International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support},
journal = {International Working Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Development},
volume = {479},
pages = {217-226},
publisher = {Springer},
series = {Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing},
abstract = {The Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline is now established in many companies. The architectures of these companies changed over time. They resulted from a long creation and maintenance process containing processes and services provided by legacy IT systems (e.g., systems, applications) that were reasonable when they were created but might now hamper the introduction of better solutions. To handle those legacies, we started researching on the notion of EA debts, which widens the scope of technical debts to organizational aspects. However, no studies have yet been conducted to validate if the concept of EA debts has a positive influence. Within this work, we have experimented with students of an EA course. Half of the students were taught the concept of EA debts, while the other half was taught about another topic simultaneously. Afterward, the students performed a modeling task graded by EA experts among the criteria of effectiveness, comprehensibility, minimality, and completeness. The analysis revealed no significant difference between the quality of the created models by the different student groups.},
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pubstate = {published},
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The Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline is now established in many companies. The architectures of these companies changed over time. They resulted from a long creation and maintenance process containing processes and services provided by legacy IT systems (e.g., systems, applications) that were reasonable when they were created but might now hamper the introduction of better solutions. To handle those legacies, we started researching on the notion of EA debts, which widens the scope of technical debts to organizational aspects. However, no studies have yet been conducted to validate if the concept of EA debts has a positive influence. Within this work, we have experimented with students of an EA course. Half of the students were taught the concept of EA debts, while the other half was taught about another topic simultaneously. Afterward, the students performed a modeling task graded by EA experts among the criteria of effectiveness, comprehensibility, minimality, and completeness. The analysis revealed no significant difference between the quality of the created models by the different student groups.
Bråtfors, Robin; Hacks, Simon; Bork, Dominik
Historization of Enterprise Architecture Models Via Enterprise Architecture Knowledge Graphs Proceedings Article
In: Barn, Balbir S.; Sandkuhl, Kurt (Ed.): The Practice of Enterprise Modeling. PoEM 2022, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2022.
@inproceedings{nokey,
title = {Historization of Enterprise Architecture Models Via Enterprise Architecture Knowledge Graphs},
author = {Robin Bråtfors and Simon Hacks and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Balbir S. Barn and Kurt Sandkuhl},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-21488-2_4},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-11-30},
urldate = {2022-11-30},
booktitle = {The Practice of Enterprise Modeling. PoEM 2022},
volume = {456},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
address = {Cham},
series = {Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing},
abstract = {Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the discipline that aims to provide a holistic view of the enterprise by explicating business and IT alignment from the perspectives of high-level corporate strategy down to daily operations and network infrastructures. EAs are consequently complex as they compose and integrate many aspects on different architecture layers. A recent proposal to cope with this complexity and to make EAs amenable to automated and intuitive visual analysis is the transformation of EA models into EA Knowledge Graphs. A remaining limitation of these approaches is that they perceive the EA to be static, i.e., they represent and analyze EAs at a single point in time. In the paper at hand, we introduce a historization concept, a prototypical implementation, and a performance analysis for how EAs can be represented and processed to enable the analysis of their evolution.},
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pubstate = {published},
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Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the discipline that aims to provide a holistic view of the enterprise by explicating business and IT alignment from the perspectives of high-level corporate strategy down to daily operations and network infrastructures. EAs are consequently complex as they compose and integrate many aspects on different architecture layers. A recent proposal to cope with this complexity and to make EAs amenable to automated and intuitive visual analysis is the transformation of EA models into EA Knowledge Graphs. A remaining limitation of these approaches is that they perceive the EA to be static, i.e., they represent and analyze EAs at a single point in time. In the paper at hand, we introduce a historization concept, a prototypical implementation, and a performance analysis for how EAs can be represented and processed to enable the analysis of their evolution.
Hacks, Simon; Smajevic, Muhamed; Bork, Dominik
Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells (Extended Abstract) Proceedings Article
In: Leopold, Henrik; Proper, Henderik A. (Ed.): EMISA 2022, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. 2022.
@inproceedings{nokey,
title = {Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells (Extended Abstract)},
author = {Simon Hacks and Muhamed Smajevic and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Henrik Leopold and Henderik A. Proper},
url = {https://dl.gi.de/bitstream/handle/20.500.12116/40217/EMISA2022-05.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-06-05},
urldate = {2022-06-05},
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number = {5},
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Jung, Jürgen; Hacks, Simon; Gooijer, Thijmen; Kinnunen, Matti; Rehring, Kevin
Revealing Common Enterprise Architecture Debts: Conceptualization and Critical Reflection on a Workshop Format Industry Experience Report Proceedings Article
In: 2021 IEEE 25th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop (EDOCW), pp. 271-278, 2021.
@inproceedings{9626297,
title = {Revealing Common Enterprise Architecture Debts: Conceptualization and Critical Reflection on a Workshop Format Industry Experience Report},
author = {Jürgen Jung and Simon Hacks and Thijmen Gooijer and Matti Kinnunen and Kevin Rehring},
doi = {10.1109/EDOCW52865.2021.00058},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-12-01},
urldate = {2021-01-01},
booktitle = {2021 IEEE 25th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop (EDOCW)},
pages = {271-278},
abstract = {The Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline evolved during the past two decades and is now established in a large number of companies. Architectures in these companies changed over time and are now the result of a long creation and maintenance process. Such architectures still contain processes and services provided by legacy IT systems (e.g., systems, applications) that were reasonable during the time they were created but might now hamper the introduction of better solutions. In order to support handling those legacies, research on the notion of EA debts has been started. The concept of EA debts widens the scope of technical debts to cover also organizational aspects offering a mean for managing EA in dynamic environments. The research encompasses the development of methods for managing debts together with a repository of typical EA debts. Identifying EA debts for the repository is challenging as required knowledge is usually not documented. Therefore, a structured approach is needed to externalize this knowledge. The paper presents a workshop format that is used to identify EA debts in organizations. Corresponding workshops are performed in two distinct companies to support them in understanding certain issues they face. First results from those workshops are presented in the second part of the paper.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
The Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline evolved during the past two decades and is now established in a large number of companies. Architectures in these companies changed over time and are now the result of a long creation and maintenance process. Such architectures still contain processes and services provided by legacy IT systems (e.g., systems, applications) that were reasonable during the time they were created but might now hamper the introduction of better solutions. In order to support handling those legacies, research on the notion of EA debts has been started. The concept of EA debts widens the scope of technical debts to cover also organizational aspects offering a mean for managing EA in dynamic environments. The research encompasses the development of methods for managing debts together with a repository of typical EA debts. Identifying EA debts for the repository is challenging as required knowledge is usually not documented. Therefore, a structured approach is needed to externalize this knowledge. The paper presents a workshop format that is used to identify EA debts in organizations. Corresponding workshops are performed in two distinct companies to support them in understanding certain issues they face. First results from those workshops are presented in the second part of the paper.
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