Henk Plessius

On the Categorization and Measurability of Enterprise Architecture Benefits with the Enterprise Architecture Value Framework

With the development of Enterprise Architecture (EA) as a discipline, measuring and understanding its value for business and IT has become relevant. In this paper a framework for categorizing the benefits of EA, the Enterprise Architecture Value Framework (EAVF), is presented and based on this framework, a measurability maturity scale is introduced.

The Enterprise Architecture Realization Scorecard: A Result Oriented Assessment Instrument

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a well-accepted, but relatively young discipline. Since most practices are in the early stages of maturity, our research is aimed to develop an assessment instrument to measure and improve the EA management function’s ability to realize its goals. In this paper, we propose the Enterprise Architecture Realization Scorecard (EARS) and an accompanying method to discover the strengths and weaknesses in the realization process of an EA management function. During an assessment, representative EA goals are selected, and for each goal, the results, delivered during the different stages of the realization process, are analyzed, discussed and valued. The outcome of an assessment is a numerical EARScorecard, explicated with indicator-values, strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations. The concept and composition of the EARS is primarily inspired by the principles of CobiT and TOGAF’s Architecture Development Method. Two cases are discussed to illustrate the use of the instrument.

Towards an Enterprise Architecture Benefits Measurement Instrument

Based on the Enterprise Architecture Value Framework (EAVF) - a generic framework to classify benefits of Enterprise Architecture (EA) - a measurement instrument for EA benefits has been developed and tested in a survey with 287 respondents. In this paper we present the results of this survey in which stakeholders of EA were questioned about the kind of benefits they experience from EA in their organization. We use the results of the survey to evaluate the framework and develop a foundation for the measurement instrument. The results of the survey show a moderate support for the assumptions underlying the framework. Applying ordinal regression, we derived sets of questions for ten out of the twelve classes in the framework. These sets constitute the first step in defining a final EA measurement instrument for establishing actual benefits in the classes of the framework.