Enterprise architecture (EA) is a description of an enterprise from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to improve business and IT alignment, and is used in the majority of large companies. However, despite that EA was established as an independent discipline long ago, a commonly accepted “big picture” in EA research is still missing. As a result, the scope of the EA discipline is vague, the extent of diversity in EA publications is poorly understood and the progression of the EA research stream over time is unclear. In this paper I conduct a comprehensive EA literature review covering 1075 publications aiming to structure, clarify and consolidate the whole EA research stream. I analyze the distribution of the EA research stream by time, source, research methodology and attitude, code all the issues discussed in EA publications into 42 narrow EA-related topics and 11 broader themes, establish the conceptual relationship between them and present a picture of the EA discipline “on a page”. Moreover, I classify all EA-related topics into four categories according to their lifecycles helping future EA researchers to better understand the evolution of the EA discipline and make the maximum contribution to it.

中文翻译：

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企业架构：我们研究了什么？

企业架构 (EA) 是从集成的业务和 IT 角度对企业的描述，旨在提高业务和 IT 的一致性，并在大多数大公司中使用。然而，尽管 EA 早在很久以前就被确立为一门独立学科，但仍然缺少 EA 研究中普遍接受的“大图”。因此，EA 学科的范围很模糊，对 EA 出版物的多样性程度知之甚少，并且 EA 研究流随时间的进展尚不清楚。在本文中，我对 1075 篇出版物进行了全面的 EA 文献综述，旨在构建、澄清和巩固整个 EA 研究流。我按时间、来源、研究方法和态度分析了 EA 研究流的分布，将 EA 出版物中讨论的所有问题编码为 42 个狭窄的 EA 相关主题和 11 个更广泛的主题，建立它们之间的概念关系并“在一页”上呈现 EA 学科的图片。此外，我将所有与 EA 相关的主题根据其生命周期分为四类，以帮助未来的 EA 研究人员更好地了解 EA 学科的发展并为其做出最大贡献。