Change impact analysis of enterprise architectures

Abstract

An enterprise architecture is a high-level description intended to capture the vision of an enterprise integrating all its dimensions: organization structure, business processes, and infrastructure. Every single part of an enterprise is subject to change, and each change may have significant consequences within all domains of the enterprise. A lot of effort is therefore devoted to maintaining the integrity of an architectural description. In this paper we address the problem of mastering the ripple effects of a proposed change. This allows architects to assess the consequences of a particular change to the enterprise, in order to identify potential impacts of a change before it actually takes place.