Eliciting Business Architecture Information in Enterprise Architecture Frameworks Using VMOST

Enterprise architectures (EA) aim to provide a cohesive information technology (IT) infrastructure by tightly aligning with an enterprise´s business environment. To facilitate this, enterprise architecture frameworks (EAF) have been used to understand an enterprise´s strategy and business architecture to synthesize a supporting IT strategy. This understanding is critical to the success of an EA. This process is not as simple as consulting an enterprise´s strategic plan or mission statement in that they may not capture the tacit strategies and missions of an enterprise´s stakeholders. Further, existing EAFs do not provide the necessary guidance to elicit this information. This paper proposes the use of a systematic elicitation approach, VMOST, to understand an enterprise´s vision, objectives and processes directly from the perspective of its stakeholders. We assess our approach through interviews with a number of employees across several departments within a University library.