An Experts' Perspective on Enterprise Architecture Goals, Framework Adoption and Benefit Assessment

Abstract

In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) management has become an intensively discussed approach in both industry and academia for managing the complexity of an enterprise from a holistic perspective. While there is a strong academic and practical interest in EA frameworks and EA modeling, there is a notable insecurity about the cost benefit ratio of EA. In this paper, we address this research problem with a qualitative research design. We conduct a series of semi-structured interviews with industry experts on enterprise architecture in order to identify classes of EA goals, corresponding EA frameworks adoption to achieve these goals and employed EA benefit assessment approaches. The findings point to, among others, a fairly stable set of EA goals that shift over time and EA frameworks that lack modularity and adjustment capabilities to easily customize towards these goals. This paper is part of an ongoing exploratory research that aims at researching which benefits emanate from EA.