Architects working agile : Methods and challenges

Sammanfattning: Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a discipline which is used for describing and designing anorganisation's infrastructure and business processes. Agile methods are known for providingflexibility and adaptability in software development but can be applied to other areas as well.Nowadays, almost all aspects of a business should advance quickly which creates new challengesthat did exist before and the agile way of working is very suitable these situations. This thesis looksinto the challenges employees currently face when working with EA and how agile methods can beused to solve these issues.To investigate this, 19 interviews have been done at an international manufacturer where itsemployees were asked about how they work, which agile practices they use and the challenges theyface. The results of those interviews are presented statistically and compared to the literature reviewas well as two additional interviews done outside of the company in order to find agile methods thatcould be possible solutions to the company's challenges.The interviews showed that the employees already work agile with most of them working iterative,incremental and implementing changes based on feedback from the business which are allprominent agile methods. A few challenges which can be solved through agile were found, one ofthose is better project prioritisation found in Kanban to solve the lack of resources. Another practiceis to have forums, inspired by SAFe ART, between different roles to address the lack ofcoordination and contact between them. The location of the EA office was a challenge which couldbe solved through a non-agile way, by moving it away from the IT department and closer to thebusiness or alternatively move it higher up within the IT organisation.