Generating Layered Enterprise Architectures with Conceptual Structures

Enterprise Architecture (EA) uses metamodels to document and align organisations’ business, information, and technology domains. This structure then enables these domains to work in harmony. Layered Enterprise Architecture Development (LEAD) builds upon EA by introducing layered metaobjects connected by semantic relations that make up LEAD’s layered metamodel. Previously, an algorithm was developed to elicit active semantic relations to achieve a view highlighting the metaobject dependencies. Subsequently, CG-FCA (Conceptual Graph and Formal Concept Analysis) and a LEAD case study were used to develop an enhanced algorithm that also generates the LEAD layers. The resulting layered FCA lattice shows a way to discover the hitherto hidden insights in LEAD, including the relationship between business and information technology.