Lines in the Water: The Line of Reasoning in an Enterprise Engineering Case Study from the Public Sector

摘要

Present day enterprises face many challenges, including mergers, acquisitions, technological innovations and the quest for new business models. These developments pose several fundamental design challenges to enterprises. We take the perspective that the design of an enterprise essentially involves a rational process that is driven by creativity and communication. Being a rational process means that there should be some underlying line of reasoning in terms of verifiable assumptions about the environment, the requirements that should be met, trade-offs with regards to the alignment between different aspects of the enterprise, et cetera, while all being used to motivate scoping and design decisions. The core driver for the research reported in this paper is the desire to better understand the line of reasoning as it is used in real-life enterprise engineering / architecture engagements. By documenting and studying the lines of reasoning followed in different cases, we aim to gain more insight into the actual reasoning followed in practical situations. This insight can then, for example, be contrasted to the line of reasoning as suggested by existing enterprise engineering / architecture methods, and more importantly be used to create more effective lines of reasoning in future cases. The larger part of this paper is therefore dedicated to a discussion of a real-life case from the public sector, where we focus on the line of reasoning followed in this case. The case concerns a large transformation program in the context of Rijkswaterstaat, which is an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. In discussing this case study, we will focus on the line of reasoning as it was actually followed by Rijkswaterstaat, while also briefly discussing some of the results that have been produced 'along the way'. To be able to position / track the line of reasoning as it was followed in the case study, we also provide six possible reasoning dimensions along which we expect the line of reasoning to propagate. For each of these reasoning dimensions we will argue why it would be relevant to study its occurrence / use in real-life cases. When combined, these reasoning dimensions form a kind of a reasoning map for enterprise engineering / architecture. This map provides us with a basic a-priori understanding of the dimensions along which the line of reasoning followed in a specific case study may propagate. In discussing the Rijkswaterstaat case study we will indeed position the followed line of reasoning in relation to this reasoning map.