Enterprise architecture is gaining acceptance as an approach to manage change and foster IT/business alignmentby (1) propagating strategy and process changes to the software and infrastructure level, by (2) supportingconsistent business transformation enabled by technology innovations, and by (3) decoupling business-oriented andtechnology-oriented architectures. Due to constant change in business as well as in technology, enterprisearchitecture management is a permanent process rather than a one-time effort. To keep enterprise architecturemodels up-to-date, a well-engineered maintenance concept including processes, roles and schedules is needed. Thispaper discusses the shortcomings of existing approaches to enterprise architecture model maintenance, proposes afederated approach, and reports on its implementation at a large financial service provider.
