Enterprise Architecture Artifacts as Boundary Objects - A Framework of Properties

This paper uses the concept of boundary objects to derive hypotheses for the design of Enterprise Architecture (EA) artifacts. Boundary objects are a useful concept to understand the coordinative role of artifacts in practice, making them a proper vehicle to analyze how EA artifacts can be designed to support communication and coordination during enterprise transformation. Since enterprise transformation projects typically involve multiple communities of practice, communication and coordination are important success factors.The paper combines a theoretical with a practice-oriented perspective: In a first step, a set of 11 boundary object properties is identified via a structured literature review. In a second step, this set of properties is discussed and extended in a focus group of nine enterprise architects, leading to a final set of 12 properties. Finally, the set of boundary object properties is linked to three classes of EA artifacts (repositories, matrices, and diagrams) from the TOGAF framework, and hypotheses are derived for the design of EA artifacts in order to become boundary objects capable of crossing a given knowledge boundary (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic). These hypotheses argue for a common syntax, stability and the provision of community-specific views.