Towards a Knowledge Management-Based Framework for Aligning Enterprise Architecture and Software Architecture

The evolutionary nature of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Software Architecture (SA) and also the continuous changing requirements of organizations have drawn the researchers' attention to the importance of managing the process of evolving architectures. One of the wellknown approaches for managing this process is managing the used knowledge in the evolution process. Sometimes the knowledge for designing the architecture is much more valuable than the designed architecture itself because the designed architecture would be destroyed if it is updated without considering the knowledge that was used or created during the design process. On the other hand, one of the goals for which updating the architecture is important is aligning SA and EA. Although the idea of using Knowledge Management (KM) for evolving architecture has somehow been addressed, researchers have sporadically considered the capability of KM techniques in supporting the alignment issues. In this research, a framework is proposed for aligning the two mentioned architectures based on KM process. Architecture designers can use this framework for aligning the architectures and researchers can use it for proposing new alignment methods.