An Agile Approach for Converting Enterprise

Architectures
.3
..
.
1
..
2
Okke Emin BAL<;I<;EK ,Mticahit GUNDEBAHAR ,Sinan <;EKEREKLI .

emin.balcicek@kuveytturk.com.tr

A bstract-E nterprise
infrastructures,

Architecture

business

processes

and

Information Technologies 1,2,3

Kuveyt Tilrk Participation Bank 1,2,3
Istanbul, Turkey 1,2,3
mucahit.gundebahar@kuveytturk.com.tr 2, sinan.cekerekli@kuveytturk.com.tr 3

includes
whole

IT

computer

applications in an enterprise. Since such enterprise architecture

is the backbone of corporates operating model and business
processes, enterprise architecture conversions are very strategic
projects.

The

general

tendency

for

enterprise

architecture

conversion is big bang approach that is hard to be supported by

executives as the results are very late for new architecture to
prove. Because of complexity and trade-off between costs and
risk, this paper suggests simple solution that starts the project
with small core team. First task will be developing coexistence
methodology between two systems in data level. By this solution
the whole system is able to redesign smaller business projects step
by step. It continues developing a prototype on simple business
scenario that contains most common behavior of all enterprise
architecture. The prototype's aim is to prove new design. The key
success factor of this model is agility while managing divided
projects and good management skill of the core team while
developing new core business processes and system architecture.

Keywords-agile;
enterprise
conversion; project management;

architecture;

corebanking

LINTRODUCTION

Responding to economic, structural as well as the radical

changes of business environment and technological shifts,
companies needs to change their business processes, computer
software applications and IT infrastructures periodically. If
corporates need big transformation on particular core items
such as people, process, corporate culture or technology, they
need a methodology to accomplish this conversion.
The general tendency for enterprise architecture conversion
(EAC) is traditional "big-bang approach" which is a commonly
used technique for corporates to meet this demand. The
corporates start huge project for these conversions. This kind of
projects need very crowded and complex project team and they
consist of analyzing all systems and business processes,
redesigning them, matching with new technologies, and lastly
developing new infrastructure with business requirements. At
the end of the conversion, corporates have to shut down old
system and start up new one at the same time. It also includes
high scale of project implementation and adoption risks. That is
why, big bang approach contains high rate of failure risk. As it
is a very comprehensive transition, there might be system

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

failure that affects business processes, service quality and sales.

All these anticipated problems make executives reluctant to
support these projects since the results are very late for new
architecture to prove.
Due to the problems and difficulties mentioned above, this
study suggests "an agile approach" as a solution. Executives,
board and other departments as customers will have high level
of satisfaction because of the customer oriented nature of agile
approach rather than system approach. Another benefit of agile
approach is that implementation of new system architecture is
quite easier, compared to other approaches. What is more, as
agile approach starts with proof of concept projects and
progresses with small divided projects thanks to the
coexistence methodology, it includes zero rate of failure risk
compared to other rival approaches. The balance between
technology and business is the contribution of this approach to
the system.
The rest of paper organize as follows, section 2 gives detail
information about the Enterprise Architecture Conversion
Projects. Section 3 details our contribution and solution for
executing huge Enterprise Architecture conversion projects.
Section 4 shows experimental results of our approach
implementation in a bank which has 300 branches in Turkey.
II.ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE CONVERSION
PROJECTS

A.

The Concept OfEnterprise Architecture

The IEEE Standard for Architectural Description of

Software-Intensive Systems (IEEE P1471/DS.3) defines
architecture as: "the fundamental organization of a system,
embodied in its components, their relationships to each other
and the environment, and the principles governing its design
and evolution".
Peter [1] defines enterprise architecture (EA) as the
organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure
reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of
the company's operating model. According to him, the
operating model is a design which aims at having an ideal state
of business process integration and business process
standardization to deliver goods and services to the customers.
MIT, on the other hand, considers enterprise architecture as a

380

critical tool for unifying IT and business strategy and as a

driving business value from IT.
In this paper, the operational definition of enterprise
architecture is a concept which establishes the corporates
integrated business processes and infonnation technologies to
achieve a corporates' mission through optimal performance of
its core business processes within an efficient infonnation
technology (IT) environment.

B.

EA Conversion Projects

Companies face the challenge of business processes and IT

infrastructures change due to the driving forces of
globalization, technology explosion, and rapid growth on
organizational structure. As a result, they increasingly need to
consider and pursue fundamental change - transformation - to
maintain or gain competitive advantage [2]. Implementing and
managing fundamental change for companies is particularly
challenging due to a number of institutional factors, huge and
complex business processes, bureaucratic procedures,
hierarchical structures and established organizational culture
[2]. Consequently, companies have to start enterprise
architecture conversion (EAC) projects to implement these
fundamental changes.
C.

Conversion Methodologies

There are four main conversion methodologies that the

companies resort to realize fundamental system changes [3]
[4]. They are named as direct cut-over conversion (known as
the big bang conversion), parallel conversion, phased
conversion and pilot conversion. These conversion
methodologies mainly differ from each other in the way that
they realize the implementation. In the following sections, big
bang conversion and parallel conversion are compared. The
first one is the most widely used method by companies while
converting EA and the second one constitutes the rationale
behind suggested approach: agile approach.

1) Big Bang Conversion

The general tendency for EAC is the traditional "big-bang
approach" which depends on big bang conversion method. It is
a commonly used technique for corporates to satisfy EAC
demands. According to Eason [5] big bang is the adoption type
of the instant changeover as the entire organization stops using
the old system and starts using the fully functioning new
system at the same time. That is why, this method is also called
"direct cut-over" conversion. Everybody starts to use the new
system at the same date and the old system will not be used
anymore from that moment on.
The conversion needs very crowded and complex project
team and it consists of analyzing all system and business
processes, redesigning them, matching with new technologies,
and developing new infrastructure with business requirements
[6].
The tendency for corporates to use big bang conversion as
EAC stems from two main reasons. First reason is that one
doesn't have to struggle with the difficulties and ill-structured
of legacy system. To implement best design to new enterprise
architecture independently without taking the old system into

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

consideration. Second reason is that there is no risk to the

legacy system during EAC. The fact that training of the staff is
only needed for the new method not also for the changeover
period and the clearness of the changeover date for everyone
favors big bang conversion for corporates.
Nevertheless, big bang conversion is treated as the riskiest
method in the literature [4] [6]. First of all, 'fall back'-plans are
hard to develop and become more impossible when the big
bang has taken place. There can also a need for catch up period
(initial dip phenomenon) to deal with particular problems and
difficulties. Furthennore, it is also hard to be supported by
executives as the results are very late for new architecture to
prove. It includes high scale of project implementation and
adaptation risks. It is hard to become familiar with new system
for the end users soon. As it is a very comprehensive transition,
there might be system failure that affects business processes,
service quality and sales.

2) Parallel Conversion
To minimize conversion risks met during the transitions,
parallel conversion is an alternative method for transferring
between previous systems to target system in an organization.
With coexistence methodology in data level, two systems can
be run simultaneously for some period of time. When the
requirements for the new system are met, the old system is
shut down [4]. Although the process requires careful planning
and control as well as a significant investment in labor hours,
it is favored as it minimizes risk compared to the other
conversion methodologies. Lee [6] also states his preference
for parallel conversion as follows: "When the organization
demands heavily on the old (legacy) system to be changed, the
trade-off between extra involved costs for a less risky parallel
approach, should be in favor of those extra costs".
IILAN AGILE APPROACH FOR ENTERPRISE
ARCHITECTURE CONVERSIONS
This study suggests simple, agile, business oriented and
risk-free solution for enterprise architecture conversions
projects. CIO.com cites a Dynamic Markets survey of 800 IT
managers, reporting that 62 percent of IT projects fail to meet
their schedules and 25 percent of IT projects get canceled
before completion [7].
The success of conversion project relies on the right
balance of business and technology. According to Juan Porter
[8] successful change management requires equal attention to
these four components: process, technology, people and
corporate culture.
Agile approach depends on parallel conversion method and
it not only focus on technology and techniques but also people.
So, the approach should be business oriented technology while
developing our new system. Agile approach works iteratively
and incrementally and targets at the whole picture while
executing conversion projects. It is a customer-oriented
approach as it makes EA attractive for them. It includes high
level of human interaction instead of virtual communication
during the project to generate significant performance. Every
business process and system artifact design in agile approach
must also be as simple as possible. Porter [8] states that

381

conversion manager should ensure that all stakeholders - from

the top executives to end users - are equipped to maximize
companies' new solution. The motto of the approach is: stated
in Ambler [9] as "Think at enterprise level but act locally".
We can deduce from the above discussion, in agile
approach, EAC should start with small core team. First task
will be developing coexistence methodology between two
systems to gain parallel adoption. By this way two systems is
able to live in coexistence and the whole system is able to
redesign smaller business projects step by step. With
developing coexistence system in the data level system can run
parallel and projects can be agile now. Federated authorized
department should be created for managing all conversion
projects. This department should include two types of team.
One of them is core team which has determined numbers of
experts and another one is conversion team which can be
increased or decreased according to scale of the ongoing
projects. Finished steps affects the other small projects in good
way.
Define Current EA
Define Target EA
Create Conversion Roadmap (Project Plan)
Make EA Project Estimation
Start EA Conversion Project
Create Federated EA Department
Form Core EA Team
Define EA Prototype of Core Module

The schema above can be defined as the project

management steps in a chronological order for accomplishing
EAC projects which are huge, complicated and risky within the
agile point of view. The flow like nature of the schema reveals
the ease of agile approach in any conversion projects. As can
be seen, the agile approach starts with proof of concept projects
and progress
with small divided projects thanks to the
coexistence methodology. Compared to other rival approaches,
there is a great emphasis on customer satisfaction due to its
customer oriented nature which can be easily seen in the
relevant steps. Overall, this system is also preferable due to its
contribution to the balance between technology and business
and the choice of paper title "An Agile Approach for
Converting Enterprise Architectures" is based on this logic.

A.

A manager should choose one of the most common EAF as

a tool to simplity conversion project. EAC needs current
business and technology diagram and goal diagram to define
roadmap. Managers should draw current EAF and target EAF
before beginning conversion projects. EAF also provides
organizations with the ability to understand and analyze
weaknesses or inconsistencies to be identified and addressed.
As a result, EAF help company to see big picture while
defining roadmap for EAC.
While developing the roadmap, the manager should bring
the core business and technology implementation forward and
prioritize it in first and most important small project. It is a
proof of concept project. This paper offers the following
roadmap for EAC;

hnplement and Prove EA through Prototype

Produce and Run Core Module
Run Core Module with old System Simultaneously
by Coexistence Methodology
Divide EA Project into Small Managable
Agile Proj ects
Form Conversion Team For Each Proj ect

B.
hnplement Each Small Project
Adopt Smal.l Projects with Paral.lel Conversion

Finish EA Conversion Project

Fig. 1. Chronological order for EAC projects

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

Roadmap for EAC

Roadmap is a plan of master project to summarize the

company's current situation and it contains chosen technology,
project management approach, and new architecture design and
implementation steps. [t also contains new business and new
technology architecture. It is executed as small IT projects to
implement the whole scope.

Defining Current Architecture

Determining EAC Goals

Choosing Technology

Implementing Coexistence Model

Using Agile Approach

New Architecture Design

o

Business Processes Design

System Architecture Design

Prototyping and Proving

User Interface Design

EACGoals

EAC goals may differ according to company's current EA

situation. As a result, a company's current technology and
business infrastructure should be well defmed. As enterprise
level companies mostly have complex and high uncertain
environment. That means, the rules and behaviors of the
organization determines the target EA which in turn determines
EAC goals. Because of the company's vision for 5 years, target
projection must be considered while determining EAC goals.

382

Manager should mind the numbers of target customers, target

service/production process and target service point. One more
point that needs to be considered for determining EAC's goal is
the company's target service type that may be 7/24 or in
business hours. Target service type affects new architecture
intensely.
After stating the company's based goals, the common best
practice specifications of EA should be added to the goals.
Suggested specifications are as follows:

c.

Well defmed and standardized business processes as

negotiated

Central system structure includes software and

hardware

communication
High-performance
between application layers

Powerful information engine which can use either

system alerts and business alerts

Smooth and fast application deployment

Data integrity from database to user interface level

Enough level security not anymore.

Open to new technology adaptation

Ability to other application integration easily

International standardization

technology

High availability and sustainability

Usability and high satisfaction on User Interfaces

Customer oriented approach on every EA process

Agile software development life cycle (SDLC)

Project Management

1) Project Management Approach

While managing EAC projects, companies need a
management approach to accomplish project successfully.
There are two known approaches while managing projects; one
of them is traditional approach the other one is agile project
management approach. Traditional approach is published by
Project Management Institute (PMI) underlying the PMBOK
(Project Management Body of Knowledge) in 2009 [10]. The
second one uses agile practices from Agile Manifesto [11].
While planning all EAC project as a program, traditional
project management, which is defined by PMI, is used.
However, in divided projects of EAC which are small building
blocks of the whole program management, agile project
management is used. According to Daniel and John Fernandez
[12] this type of management is called as "Hybrid Approach".
Although our suggested solution use two project management
approach and it seems as hybrid, agile project management is
dominating all conversion projects because of the divided
nature of the projects.
After determining project approach, establishing roadmap
and generating project plan, companies need to make
projection estimation in order to determine resource, time and
budget for EAC.

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

2) Project Estimation Technique

According PMI (2008), there are 5 types of project
estimating techniques which are: analogous estimating (Top
down), bottom-up estimating, parametric estimating, three
points estimating and what-if analysis.
In this approach, a manager should mix top-down, bottom
up estimation techniques to obtain the best estimation. Not only
top-down but also bottom-up estimation should be considered
about time and budget in projection. Top-down estimation
should be done first. Validity of top-down duration estimates
depends on historical information, similarity of the historical
projects and expert judgment. After that, to do bottom-up
estimation, every single project should be inspected in detail.
All tasks identified in work break down structure and
estimation should be done. Duration time should be calculated
in person-day unit to understand clear and simple employee
allocation. After determining person-day of all projects, budget
can be calculated. This result should be compared with top
down estimation. Top-down and bottom-up estimation should
be approximate to gain good estimation. While estimating each
task, analogous estimating method should be used by using
expert judgment. After this step, project plan may be updated.
A manager of EAC project has to prove this project
estimation to the board for project approval. Cross check time
and budget projection with trusted advisory company is a
cogent evidence for approving EAC projection.

D) Organization Model During Conversion

In agile approach, human management is more significant
than business and technology development. In this section, how
to achieve this management issue successfully is discussed.
1) Creating Federated Department
As EAC influences every department in organization, all
department tend to be in project implementation. All
departments at issue want to be in decision process. In tum,
there are too many heads and competing departments which
make the process slow down. It cause to chaos and lead in
losing control. In order to execute, conversion Project
Company needs to create fully authorized federated
department. Due to the enterprise architecture notion, the name
of the department should be Enterprise Architecture
Department (EAD). This department should be under the head
of Information Technology.
2) Matrix Structure
EAC project comprises of small IT projects. IT projects
need different roles of people such as business domain expert,
software architect, software developer, system analyst, project
manager, test engineer, deployment expert. It is hard to
consolidate these roles in just one department.
It is important to position key employees for project:
software architect, software developer, system analyst and test
engineer in the EA department to maximize efficiency and gain
rapid output during project implementation. They should
change their position to the EA department if it is possible. For
another resources especially business domain experts, company
should choose strong matrix organization structure to manage
human resources in EAC projects.

383

E) Human Resource Management During Conversion

Despite the fact that EAC projects are business oriented, IT
task items are more than business task items. IT projects are
knowledge base projects and they are highly depended on
personal knowledge and skills.
Employment of conversion project team is a very critical
issue and this team should be recruited by technical person who
is independent of human resource department. Another
important issue is training these people. Management of this
team is core competence for the process of agile approach.
Two types of organization group are offered. One of them
is core team which has determined numbers of experts and
another one is conversion team which can be increased or
decreased according to scale of the ongoing projects. The key
success factor of this model is agility while managing divided
projects and good management skill the core team while
developing new core business processes and system
architecture. Core team has to include Enterprise Architects,
who are minimum 2 business domain experts with minimum 7
years' experience and high level skills on software architecture
design and implementation. Enterprise architect count should
be determined according to EAC project size.
Depending on their experiences on big EAC projects, the
recruitment of project team should comprised of outsource and
in-house employees. Because of parallel adoption method and
coexistence system, conversion project can run step by step.
During EAC, the numbers of divided projects that are already
running may be increased or decreased according to next
business process and technology implementation. Therefore,
the numbers of conversion project members may change
dynamically and the numbers become uncertain. Hereby
company should outsource some part of project to manage this
uncertainty.

F) CoExistence Model
Because of high rate of IT projects failure, companies
should prefer parallel adoption while implementing EAC
projects. Parallel adoption leads companies to more agile
during conversion projects. For implementing parallel
adoption, the company needs to develop coexistence model. It
is only way to implement coexistence model at data level for
abstracting business processes. Coexistence model may be
synchronous or asynchronous. If the old and new system is the
same database software, synchronous would be used; otherwise
it would be asynchronous [13]. According to Ozer and
Glindebahar [13] Coexistence system can be preferred as it
only adds just 2% performances overhead to the system. So it
is possible to gain advantage with spending low system
resource to simplify EAC.
G) Agile Methodology
EAC project includes lots of divided IT projects. Every
project includes business and technology goals and a team.
Efficiency and team management bring into front. Agile
practices expert on this two items. Therefore, manager should
use agile project management practices because of achieving
target efficiently in small projects. John D. Fernandez and
Daniel J. Fernandez [12] explain set of agile project
management practices including the following: simplicity, hug
the changes, fmish and focus on next job, incrementally

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

change, maxImIze value of every task, govern with a goal,

query every single task, fast feedback from all stakeholders,
high quality output, deliverable, create documentation just to
gain value.
Consequently, because of huge amount of small projects,
agile project management dominates the EAC project. Hence,
company needs to learn and implement these agile practices
while developing new enterprise architecture.

1) Focus On People, Not Technology Or Techniques

Using EAFs as a tool and high level of technology and
techniques are necessary but not sufficient factors for making
conversion projects a success. The key success factor,
however, is focusing on people (project team, customers, end
users, executive boards) and human management as well as the
balance between technology and business. Fred Brooks [14]
states that the success of a project depends more on the quality
of the people on a project, and their organization and
management than the tools corporates use or the technical
approaches they take. So, a successful conversion project
should direct its attention to the organization and management
of human resources. One shouldn't forget that EA model is
useless unless the project team cannot take advantage of it no
matter how perfect it is.
Ambler [9] follows Fred Brooks' notion and claim that
manager of EAC would realize that it needs to make their work
attractive to their customers (software developers, system
analyst, business stakeholders, IT & senior business executives
and end users) including their services. If customers perceive
that you have value to add, your enterprise architecture efforts
will aid them in their jobs. In turn, they are much more likely to
work with you. If, on the other hand, they think that you're
wasting their time, they won't work with you. They'll find
ways to avoid you, to cancel or postpone meetings with you.
They want to avoid using your new system which is a big
challenge for the success of projects.
What Brooks [14] and Ambler [9] have in common is that a
company should support the new EA system until it proves
itself. It is very important to build customer representative team
to support new EA. Customer representative team consists of
senior business experts who are trained by project team on new
EA and user interfaces. The function of this team is informing
the system users to solve the problems that occur in parallel run
of the system. The end-users believe that the new architecture
is fully supported by management thanks to this representative
team.

2) The Building Blocks OfAgile Approach

Amber [9] points out that there are critical points in agile
approach which make it effective and superior to its rivals.
First critical point in agile is the concept of simplicity. One
should keep enterprise architecture artifacts as simple as
possible since it will increase the chances that audience will
understand them. The project team will actually read them and
you will be able to keep them up to date over time. The idea is
that a simple model that project teams actually use is more
valuable than detailed documents. So, each phase during
conversion should comprise simple steps.

384

The second significant competence of agile is its being

iterative and incremental since it is easier to implement and
manage. In this way, every level of corporate culture can
understand this simplified implementation methodology. While
converting to new EA, company should execute projects step
by step to gain agility.
Lastly, prototyping and proving are pros of agile approach.
That is, new EA contains new technology and new business
process design as well as the integration of these two critical
items. New design needs to prove itself to build all EA on it.
So, company must develop simple prototype over a small
business scenario which encloses most common and core case
of all EA. If prototype proves itself, project goes on this
prototype but if not prototype has to be redesigned. So,
company is saved from spending much time to build wrong
design and spending more human resource.
In line with Amber [9] we can add one more building block
for agile approach. That is, the success of change management
relies on the right balance between business and technology.
So, the approach should be business oriented technology while
developing our new system and conversion manager ensures
that all stakeholders - from the top executives to end users - are
equipped to maximize companies' new solution.
IV.EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed model has been used for a large scaled
enterprise architecture conversion project which started in July
2009 and is being expected to finish in 2013, in a bank which
has 300 branches in Turkey. In this project the whole IT
infrastructures and computer application modules have been
renewed to adapt new technologies and convert to new
business processes. With this new system, the bank has been a
technology pioneer instead of being a technology follower.
Besides, eighteen site visits have been taken place from well
known banks and enterprises. These institutions have been
informed about the proposed model and conversion projects
that are mentioned in this article.
The bank has been transformed into 3 tier application
server architecture from 2 tier in this conversion. A powerful
enterprise architecture framework (EAF), which was donated
by standards and procedures, has been built to be used in large
scaled application development. Thanks to this EAF, a
software production line is formed so that an XTM software
package which is comprised of 200 user interfaces & 20 sub
modules, a core banking application that has 2200 user
interfaces & 120 sub modules and internet banking application
with 287 user interfaces & 18 sub modules were implemented.
Conversion project has cost 68000 man day and 36 million
USD in total.
During the project, a team of Enterprise Architects with the
number of twelve has been available. Yet, the number of
project team that has implemented the small dividend business
projects, has varied between five and eighty depending on the
number and the size of the ongoing projects. This particular
team has been related to Enterprise Architecture Department
which is federated and fully authorized for the conversion
project. Thanks to matured EAF, outsource and in-house
employees can easily be assigned to ongoing business projects.

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

A team has been constituted to support the modules which are

produced and put into use so that the conversion can be easily
accepted and involved by end users. That is, a user oriented
approach is adopted. An in-service training has been given to
the end users. Required training documents and videos have
been prepared and deployed on the software applications.
Along with the academic references given above, a
questionnaire has been conducted to IT Department of a bank
which has 300 branches in Turkey with the aim of verifying the
simplicity, dynamicity and practicality of the proposed model.
In this questionnaire, two EACs, one of which has at least four
year experience with the budget of 60 million dollar has been
compared by thirty IT managers and eight enterprise architects.
The results showed that the proposed model has proved its
acceptability by showing the fact that while 76% of the
subjects stated that the acceptance hasn't been given easily by
the senior management in traditional approach, the situation is
just the opposite in agile approach thanks to the prototype
model. Another advantage of the proposed model is its being a
risk free system which can be easily observed in the results of
"The risk of the project being failed is highly probable" and
"The success of the project termination is high" questions for
each approach. Due to the parallel run and step by step module
development and deployment, agile approach is favored by the
subjects in the item: "The implementation of EAC with
agile/traditional approach is easier". Lastly, 100% of the
subjects have stated that they will prefer agile approach over
traditional approach in prospective conversions.
TABLE I. Evaluation of Traditional (Big-bang) Approach
Traditional
Approach
Acceptance of
senior management
is easily taken
The risk of the
project being failed
is highly probable
The success of the
project termination
is high
The pleasure of the
end user is high
The outsource
usage is easy
Hybrid (PMI +
Agile) approach has
simplified the
project
management
The cost of EAC
with traditional
approach is higher
The implementation
of EAC with
traditional approach
IS easier
I would keep on
working with
traditional approach

Definitely
Agree

Agree

Partly
Agree

Don't
Agree

Definitely
Don't
Agree

5,88%

5,88%

1 1,76
%

64,7 1
%

1 1,76%

58,82%

29,4%

1 1,76
%

0,00%

0,00%

0,00%

5,88%

17,65
%

47,06
%

29,4 1%

0,00%

0,00%

0,00%

5,88%

17,65
%
23,53
%

4 1, 18
%
52,94
%

5,88%

5,88%

4 1, 18
%

35,29
%

1 1,76%

35,29%

47,0%

1 1,76
%

5,88%

0,00%

0,00%

5,88%

17,65
%

29,4 1
%

47,06%

0,00%

0,00%

5,88%

4 1, 18
%

52,94%

4 1, 18%
17,65%

385

TABLE [I. Evaluation of Agile Approach

Agile
Approach
Acceptance of
senior
management is
easily taken
The risk of the
project being
failed is highly
probable
The success of
the project
termination is
high
The pleasure of
the end user is
high
The outsource
usage is easy
Hybrid (PMI +
Agile) approach
has simplified
the project
management
The cost of
EAC with agile
approach is
higher
The
implementation
of EAC with
agile approach
IS easier
I would keep on
working with
agile approach

Definitely
Agree

Agree

Partly
Agree

Don't
Agree

Definitely
Don't
Agree

17,65%

58,82%

17,65%

5,88%

0,00%

0,00%

1 1,76%

23,53%

58,82%

5,88%

23,53%

70,59%

5,88%

0,00%

0,00%

23,53%

47,06%

23,53%

5,88%

0,00%

0,00%

58,82%

23,53%

17,65%

0,00%

35,29%

29,4 1%

29,4 1%

17,65%

0,00%

5,88%

47,06%

70,59%

5,88%

52,94%

23,53%

17,65%

0,00%

5,88%

47,06%

0,00%

0,00%

23,53%

0,00%

0,00%

The only unexpected result for us is the fact that the cost of
the agile approach is higher than the traditional approach. Prior
to the survey, we expected the cost of traditional approach
lesser due to the academic references. For detailed
investigation, the cost of the two projects has been asked from
the company. The information has proved the subject's
answers. We speculate that this may stem from the
management of large scale conversions' being difficult due to
the continuous feedback which necessitates regular
interruptions.
V.CONCLUS[ON

conversIOn projects to eliminate or at least minimize the

complexity as well as the risk factors. A questionnaire has
conducted. The items in the questionnaire are related to these
criteria in order to compare traditional big bang approach with
proposed agile approach. The empirical also proved our thesis.
The key elements of this approach like EA roadmap, using
enterprise
architecture
frameworks,
hybrid
project
management, agile methodology, organizational management,
business oriented approach, customer centricity, parallel
adoption and user experienced design are investigated and
explained in detail in an order.
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The Enterprise Architecture conversion is a big challenge

for companies and organizations throughout the world. [n
Turkey, for example, there are big companies which are
challenged by these conversion processes. This stems from the
complexity of the [T infrastructures, computer applications
and internal business processes. These companies try to
convert their EA via traditional project approaches. That is,
the majority of them use big bang approach in their
conversions which add to the complexity of the process as
well as maximizing the failure of adoption to the new system.
[n this study, however, a simple, iterative and customer
oriented approach is suggested for enterprise architecture

ISBN: 978-1-4673-5613-82013 IEEE

386