Enterprise Architecture Content Model Applied to Complexity Management While Delivering IT Services

Complex information technology (IT) installations within an enterprise raise contextual challenges when delivering IT service management (ITSM) that maintain and enhance software for the business. Enterprise Architecture (EA) tools are now available to represent context as business processes, services and enabling IT components. However, few methods exist to leverage these representations for the management of complexity that exits in the EA. In this paper, we contribute towards this emerging area of research by posing fundamental questions: 1) "what makes an IT service complex to deliver and by what measures?" and 2) "what is the complexity management?" To answer these questions, we begin by examining related work in measures of software complexity. Next, we use a graph-based framework to identify complexity patterns that exist in the real world. Using the framework and case study method we show the relationships between the difficulty of service delivery and complexity patterns in the EA context. Generalizing from this, we propose principles for the complexity management.