Verksamhetsarkitektur i små och medelstora företag : En studie om processer, information, IT-miljö och verksamhetsförmågor

Sammanfattning: The goal of this study is to examine how small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) describe and model the part of Enterprise Architecture (EA) that is concerned with the business architecture by looking at four common modelling perspectives within business architecture – processes, information, IT systems and business capabilities. The study both examines if general models and descriptions have been created by the SMEs for the aforementioned perspectives, as well as if the SMEs have created target architectures for change management. Finally, this study also examines what the businesses consider that they need to be able to work more with business architecture, as well as if there are any differences between the small and the medium-sized enterprises in the study. The study was conducted by means of a survey, that was sent to around 1170 enterprises. 140 of them answered the survey, and the answers show that a clear majority of the SMEs have created some descriptions, completely or partly, of their business architecture for all the studied perspectives. In addition, around half of them have created target architectures, complete or partial ones, for all the perspectives. Process description was the most common type of business architecture description among the respondents, over 80 % of respondents have described them at least partly, whereas description of information was the least common one, around 50 % have described their information at least partly. The main things the SMEs say they need to be able to work more with business architecture are time and resources, some also request more knowledge about method, and some external support, and some are/were waiting for a major enterprise crisis to begin their business architecture work.  Medium-sized enterprises, as well as enterprises that have a certain position for a business architect, work more with all types of descriptions and models than smaller enterprises and those that do not have an architect. However, the differences were only found to be statistically significant for a few of the perspectives.