EA is not in itself about business improvement, technology alignment, strategic planning and portfolio management; EA enables them all though, if properly modelled. As such, to measure Enterprise Architecture value as an EA architect, one needs to evaluate what EA delivers to Enterprise stakeholders, taking into account their views.

These stakeholders, not the architects, are in charge of strategic planning, process improvement, technology alignment to business, decision making etc and thus they will eventually materialise the benefits if properly supplied with the EA artifacts they need. The EA architect does not do strategy, portfolio management... but works to support these efforts.

Nevertheless, when top management asks though what are the EA benefits, they indeed talk about the whole Enterprise. Then the EA architect needs to pull together all benefits realised at all Stakeholders for the good of the Enterprise.

Overall and in the end, assuming EA is mature enough (has a proper EA development and utilisation process), the EA benefits may be translated in Enterprise Simplification, Integration, Alignment, Agility and Strategic planning.

A note. EA has strong roots in IT. It consists though not only of business and IT but also of non-IT and organization architectures. Without the business view the IT picture alone cannot offer the touted benefits. As such the business and organisation architectures become essential in returning benefits to all people rather than IT alone as is the case today.

Adrian @ www.enterprise-architecture-matters.co.uk

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