A Scheme for Systematically Selecting an Enterprise Architecture Framework

Information systems are complex and because society heavily depends on them, they have to be developed using the right enterprise architecture frameworks (EAFs). Although some major EAFs have been developed for more than a decade, information systems still fail to satisfy demands that organizations face and this reduces their competitive abilities. The failure may be due to the fact that either the right frameworks are not employed in architecture design or the EAFs are not complete to support specific architecture design. Organizations still have difficulties in identifying an appropriate EAF and the EAF perspectives and aspects suitable for their organizations. This paper claims that selecting the right EAF for architectural design plays a crucial role in system development as a first step in a process that turns a requirements specification into a working software and hardware system. To help organizations systematically select the best EAF for the usages they envisage, this paper proposes the Enterprise Architecture Framework Selection Scheme (EAFSS).