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
Jung, Jürgen; Hacks, Simon; Gooijer, Thijmen; Kinnunen, Matti; Rehring, Kevin
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.
Smajevic, Muhamed; Hacks, Simon; Bork, Dominik
Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells Inproceedings
In: Serral, Estefanía; Stirna, Janis; Ralyté, Jolita; Grabis, Jānis (Ed.): The Practice of Enterprise Modeling, pp. 48–63, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2021, ISBN: 978-3-030-91279-6.
@inproceedings{10.1007/978-3-030-91279-6_4,
title = {Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Enterprise Architecture Smells},
author = {Muhamed Smajevic and Simon Hacks and Dominik Bork},
editor = {Estefanía Serral and Janis Stirna and Jolita Ralyté and Jānis Grabis},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-91279-6_4},
isbn = {978-3-030-91279-6},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-11-15},
urldate = {2021-11-15},
booktitle = {The Practice of Enterprise Modeling},
pages = {48--63},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
address = {Cham},
abstract = {Hitherto, the concept of Enterprise Architecture (EA) Smells has been proposed to assess quality flaws in EAs and their models. Together with this new concept, a catalog of different EA Smells has been published and a first prototype was developed. However, this prototype is limited to ArchiMate and is not able to assess models adhering to other EA modeling languages. Moreover, the prototype is not integrate-able with other EA tools. Therefore, we propose to enhance the extensible Graph-based Enterprise Architecture Analysis (eGEAA) platform that relies on Knowledge Graphs with EA Smell detection capabilities. To align these two approaches, we show in this paper, how ArchiMate models can be transformed into Knowledge Graphs and provide a set of queries on the Knowledge Graph representation that are able to detect EA Smells. This enables enterprise architects to assess EA Smells on all types of EA models as long as there is a Knowledge Graph representation of the model. Finally, we evaluate the Knowledge Graph based EA Smell detection by analyzing a set of 347 EA models.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Hitherto, the concept of Enterprise Architecture (EA) Smells has been proposed to assess quality flaws in EAs and their models. Together with this new concept, a catalog of different EA Smells has been published and a first prototype was developed. However, this prototype is limited to ArchiMate and is not able to assess models adhering to other EA modeling languages. Moreover, the prototype is not integrate-able with other EA tools. Therefore, we propose to enhance the extensible Graph-based Enterprise Architecture Analysis (eGEAA) platform that relies on Knowledge Graphs with EA Smell detection capabilities. To align these two approaches, we show in this paper, how ArchiMate models can be transformed into Knowledge Graphs and provide a set of queries on the Knowledge Graph representation that are able to detect EA Smells. This enables enterprise architects to assess EA Smells on all types of EA models as long as there is a Knowledge Graph representation of the model. Finally, we evaluate the Knowledge Graph based EA Smell detection by analyzing a set of 347 EA models.
Tieu, Benny; Hacks, Simon
Determining Enterprise Architecture Smells from Software Architecture Smells Inproceedings
In: 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI), pp. 134-142, IEEE, 2021.
@inproceedings{9610644,
title = {Determining Enterprise Architecture Smells from Software Architecture Smells},
author = {Benny Tieu and Simon Hacks},
doi = {10.1109/CBI52690.2021.10064},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-11-01},
urldate = {2021-11-01},
booktitle = {2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)},
volume = {02},
pages = {134-142},
publisher = {IEEE},
abstract = {Software Architectural Smells (SA smells) are design problems in the internal structure and behavior of an SA. These can be seen as a specific category under the umbrella concept of Technical Debt (TD). TD is a central concept in software development projects and having the means to detect and measure the smells is important to understand impairments they may cause. However, TD is only limited to the technical aspects and does not describe smells found on an enterprise level. Enterprise Architecture Debt (EAD) expands the concepts of TD beyond the technical aspects such that it covers the debts that can be found in all layers of an Enterprise Architecture (EA). EA smells give a measurement for EAD, by providing means for detecting the smell, hence enabling a method to quantify the level of debt. The goal of this paper is to find EA smells derived from existing SA smells. This has resulted in three new EA smells that could be used as measurements for the quality of an EA. They can also be used in the future as a basis for automatic EA smell detection.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Software Architectural Smells (SA smells) are design problems in the internal structure and behavior of an SA. These can be seen as a specific category under the umbrella concept of Technical Debt (TD). TD is a central concept in software development projects and having the means to detect and measure the smells is important to understand impairments they may cause. However, TD is only limited to the technical aspects and does not describe smells found on an enterprise level. Enterprise Architecture Debt (EAD) expands the concepts of TD beyond the technical aspects such that it covers the debts that can be found in all layers of an Enterprise Architecture (EA). EA smells give a measurement for EAD, by providing means for detecting the smell, hence enabling a method to quantify the level of debt. The goal of this paper is to find EA smells derived from existing SA smells. This has resulted in three new EA smells that could be used as measurements for the quality of an EA. They can also be used in the future as a basis for automatic EA smell detection.
Hacks, Simon; Jung, Jürgen
Enterprise Architecture Debts -- A Concept to Manage EA Evolution? Miscellaneous
ICIS 2020 TREOs, 2020.
@misc{Hacks.b,
title = {Enterprise Architecture Debts -- A Concept to Manage EA Evolution?},
author = {Simon Hacks and Jürgen Jung},
url = {https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_icis2020/5/
http://ea-debts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TREO_EADebt_final.pdf
https://ea-debts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TREO_Presentation.pdf
},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-12-14},
urldate = {2020-12-02},
number = {5},
series = {ICIS 2020 TREOs},
abstract = {The EA discipline provides methods and tools for aligning business with corporate IT and even fostering (digital) innovation in an organization. Despite the plethora of research and practice, business-IT alignment is still a challenging task as it requires changes throughout an enterprise's technology, processes, and organization. The complexity of those changes does not only lie in their nature but is also influenced by the corporate environment. Established IT systems, technical debt (TD), outdated processes or even an extensive EAM framework might hamper the introduction or renovation of required business systems and processes. Furthermore, those debts slow down innovation and impose a tremendous risk on continu-ously optimizing business and IT. Even though these debts might have a big impact, it is sometimes hard to identify them explicitly due to the complexity of the organization and its processes. Methodical support is required in order to help with identifying them and miti-gating the associated risk.
Hitherto, we have proposed the concept of EA Debts arising from the concept of TD. While TD focuses on technical aspects, like flaws in the code basis or issues with the database de-sign, EA Debts try to capture a holistic view on the organization. EA Debts cover aspects among all EA layers but also their interdependencies. We assume that the concept of EA Debts can help enterprise architects to cope with the upcoming challenges related to digital-ization and agile projects. It provides them with a means to visualize the consequences of certain decisions on the EA and, thus, eases their argumentation towards a more sustainable architecture.
As the concept of EA Debts is relatively young, it offers a wide spectrum of future research activities: Adopting established metrics that can contribute to the assessment of EA Debt, but also developing new metrics. Thresholds need to be determined that indicate when a metric’s value should be interpreted as critical. Management techniques need to be estab-lished that keep the level of EA Debt in an organization under control. Finally, socio-technical aspects related to EA Debts in organizations should not be neglected.
In our talk, we like to introduce the topic to the audience and gather their feedback. Fur-thermore, we like to invite other researchers to contribute to the EA Debt related stream of research in future and to collaborate with us.},
howpublished = {ICIS 2020 TREOs},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {misc}
}
The EA discipline provides methods and tools for aligning business with corporate IT and even fostering (digital) innovation in an organization. Despite the plethora of research and practice, business-IT alignment is still a challenging task as it requires changes throughout an enterprise's technology, processes, and organization. The complexity of those changes does not only lie in their nature but is also influenced by the corporate environment. Established IT systems, technical debt (TD), outdated processes or even an extensive EAM framework might hamper the introduction or renovation of required business systems and processes. Furthermore, those debts slow down innovation and impose a tremendous risk on continu-ously optimizing business and IT. Even though these debts might have a big impact, it is sometimes hard to identify them explicitly due to the complexity of the organization and its processes. Methodical support is required in order to help with identifying them and miti-gating the associated risk.
Hitherto, we have proposed the concept of EA Debts arising from the concept of TD. While TD focuses on technical aspects, like flaws in the code basis or issues with the database de-sign, EA Debts try to capture a holistic view on the organization. EA Debts cover aspects among all EA layers but also their interdependencies. We assume that the concept of EA Debts can help enterprise architects to cope with the upcoming challenges related to digital-ization and agile projects. It provides them with a means to visualize the consequences of certain decisions on the EA and, thus, eases their argumentation towards a more sustainable architecture.
As the concept of EA Debts is relatively young, it offers a wide spectrum of future research activities: Adopting established metrics that can contribute to the assessment of EA Debt, but also developing new metrics. Thresholds need to be determined that indicate when a metric’s value should be interpreted as critical. Management techniques need to be estab-lished that keep the level of EA Debt in an organization under control. Finally, socio-technical aspects related to EA Debts in organizations should not be neglected.
In our talk, we like to introduce the topic to the audience and gather their feedback. Fur-thermore, we like to invite other researchers to contribute to the EA Debt related stream of research in future and to collaborate with us.
Hitherto, we have proposed the concept of EA Debts arising from the concept of TD. While TD focuses on technical aspects, like flaws in the code basis or issues with the database de-sign, EA Debts try to capture a holistic view on the organization. EA Debts cover aspects among all EA layers but also their interdependencies. We assume that the concept of EA Debts can help enterprise architects to cope with the upcoming challenges related to digital-ization and agile projects. It provides them with a means to visualize the consequences of certain decisions on the EA and, thus, eases their argumentation towards a more sustainable architecture.
As the concept of EA Debts is relatively young, it offers a wide spectrum of future research activities: Adopting established metrics that can contribute to the assessment of EA Debt, but also developing new metrics. Thresholds need to be determined that indicate when a metric’s value should be interpreted as critical. Management techniques need to be estab-lished that keep the level of EA Debt in an organization under control. Finally, socio-technical aspects related to EA Debts in organizations should not be neglected.
In our talk, we like to introduce the topic to the audience and gather their feedback. Fur-thermore, we like to invite other researchers to contribute to the EA Debt related stream of research in future and to collaborate with us.
Lehmann, Barry-Detlef; Alexander, Peter; Lichter, Horst; Hacks, Simon
Towards the Identification of Process Anti-Patterns in Enterprise Architecture Models Inproceedings
In: 8th International Workshop on Quantitative Approaches to Software Quality in conjunction with the 27th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2020), pp. 47-54, CEUR-WS, 2020.
@inproceedings{Lehmann2020,
title = {Towards the Identification of Process Anti-Patterns in Enterprise Architecture Models},
author = {Barry-Detlef Lehmann and Peter Alexander and Horst Lichter and Simon Hacks},
url = {http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2767/06-QuASoQ-2020.pdf},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-12-11},
booktitle = {8th International Workshop on Quantitative Approaches to Software Quality in conjunction with the 27th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2020)},
volume = {2767},
pages = {47-54},
publisher = {CEUR-WS},
abstract = {IT processes constitute the backbone of an integrated enterprise architecture (EA). The model thereof sustains the development and management of the EA. Nevertheless, the quality of such models tends to degrade over time due to, e.g. improper modeling practices or ineffective evaluation. In this regard, the knowledge of relevant modeling anti-patterns can help identify, mitigate, and prevent the occurrence of sub-optimal or adverse constructs in the model. In the field of business process modeling (BPM), a plethora of BPM anti-patterns has been defined and compiled in various taxonomies. However, these BPM anti-patterns mostly focus on technical issues, which thus are applicable for evaluating workflows but not EA-level processes. We strongly argue that the concept of process anti-pattern in EA domain can facilitate EA analyses on process-related issues. To address this gap, this paper presents a catalogue of 18 EA process modeling anti-patterns, which we derived from the existing BPM anti-patterns. Our result should serve as food for thought and motivation for future research in this context.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
IT processes constitute the backbone of an integrated enterprise architecture (EA). The model thereof sustains the development and management of the EA. Nevertheless, the quality of such models tends to degrade over time due to, e.g. improper modeling practices or ineffective evaluation. In this regard, the knowledge of relevant modeling anti-patterns can help identify, mitigate, and prevent the occurrence of sub-optimal or adverse constructs in the model. In the field of business process modeling (BPM), a plethora of BPM anti-patterns has been defined and compiled in various taxonomies. However, these BPM anti-patterns mostly focus on technical issues, which thus are applicable for evaluating workflows but not EA-level processes. We strongly argue that the concept of process anti-pattern in EA domain can facilitate EA analyses on process-related issues. To address this gap, this paper presents a catalogue of 18 EA process modeling anti-patterns, which we derived from the existing BPM anti-patterns. Our result should serve as food for thought and motivation for future research in this context.
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