Complexity and Adaptive Enterprise Architecture

In the current VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) environment, enterprises are facing constant threats and opportunities due to internal and external factors. Those factors can impact various parts of the enterprise in the form of changes. Thus, Adaptive Enterprise Architecture (EA) is leveraged to assist the continuous adaptation to the evolving transformation. On the other hand, the complexity has been identified as one of the major challenges of the discipline of Enterprise Architecture. Moreover, one of the criteria of Adaptive EA is the ability to monitor and control the complexity of changes. Consequently, in this paper, we suggest a conceptualization of EA complexity measurement drilled down into factors and indicators. First, we begin with a brief summary of the criteria that we consider compulsory for Adaptive Enterprise Architecture and we give an overview of the model that we worked on in previous work. Then we investigate related work about complexity in a broader view. Finally, we describe our approach of assessment of complexity based on the proposed indicators. Copyright © 2021 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda.