Using orientor theory for coherent decision making for application landscape design

More than 30 years have past since the first enterprise architecture (EA) management framework has been published. While the field has reached a certain maturity in science and practice, a paradigm shift is just beginning. The emerging trend to regard an enterprise as a complex adaptive system might allow to redefine and achieve the holistic nature of EA management approaches. Thereby, the focus on static aspects of the architecture might be extended by taking behavioral aspects into account. In this paper, we argue (1) that currently available EA management approaches fall short in achieving the desired holism, i.e. viewing the system (application landscape) as a whole, (2) apply orientor theory to support decision making by deriving coordinated goals and principles for application landscape design and (3) show how a system-ofsystems approach of applied orientor theory could look like. We conclude the paper by sketching out an appropriate research agenda.