Enterprise engineering

Context

Enterprises change continually. In other words, they transform themselves (or get transformed). Such transformations may refer to all aspects of the enterprise, IT, business processes, et cetera. To consciously make decisions on where to transform to, to study problems in the current state, to guard progress, et cetera, organisations can use an engineering (and therefore inherently model-based) discipline. One could say, this leads to model-based enterprise transformation. We refer to this field as enterprise engineering.

Defining the field

Enterprise engineering is an emerging discipline that studies enterprises and their transformation from an engineering perspective. Three key paradigms underpin this discipline:

The first paradigm states that enterprises are purposefully designed and implemented systems. Consequently, they can be re-designed and re-implemented if there is a need for change. All kinds of changes are accommodated: strategic, tactical, operational, and technological. This paradigm does not exclude the idea that enterprises may ‘grow organically’. It allows for this possibility by considering such (re-) development of an enterprise to be or to have been conducted more or less instinctively within established boundary conditions.
The second paradigm states that there are two distinct and inclusive perspectives on systems: function and construction. The function perspective corresponds to a black-box model of the system, focussing on the externally observable behaviour. The construction perspective corresponds to a white-box model of the system, zooming in on the internal construction of the system.
The third paradigm states that enterprises are primarily social systems, which means that the (atomic) elements are social individuals. The driving principle of organisations, which make them operate, is that these social individuals enter into and comply with commitments regarding the products or services to be created or delivered. The social individuals (for practical reasons, human beings) in an enterprise can be supported by technical artifacts of all kinds, notably by ICT-applications.

A specific branch of enterprise engineering is the enterprise ontology based approach as advocated by the CIAO! network. They add one more crucial paradigm:

In order to intellectually manage the (re-)development of an object system, the function design should start from the ontological model of the using system, and the construction design should deliver the ontological model of the object system. The ontological model of (the organization of) an enterprise is called its enterprise ontology.

Enterprise modelling, enterprise architecture and enterprise governance

Since enterprise engineering is a model intensive activity, an important sub-domain is the field of enterprise modelling, concerned with modelling techniques and approaches for the modelling of different aspects on an enterprise, ranging from its business aspects to its ICT support.

Enterprise architecture concerns the identification, the specification, and the application of design restrictions, which come in addition to the specific requirements in every change project. These design restrictions provide an operationalisation of an enterprise's strategic basis (mission, vision), and offers restrictions and guidance on how to shape and implement the ontological model of the enterprise. Only in this way can one achieve and guarantee that the operations of an enterprise are fully compliant with its mission and strategies.

Enterprise governance constitutes the organisational conditions for an enterprise engineering based discipline into an enterprise's transformation processes. It constitutes the primary condition for making the enterprise engineering approach feasible and beneficial.