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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | 
There's been a lot said and written about the elusive value of Enterprise Architecture (EA). It's actually not as hard as we all make it. The value of EA, both tangible and intangible, can be measured in hard currency (of your choice). However, as an enabling function, that value is directly related to what the stakeholders perceive it to be. As far as translating EA metrics into currency, that process is unique to each organization due to cultural evolution and corporate goals and objectives. After all, if they were all the same, where could one derive competitive advantage? The value of EA, imho, is in strengthening organization's competitive advantage position - whether by enabling business units in reducing cost, increasing productivity, avoiding future costs, or enabling top line growth.
It is that uniqueness that makes EA so challenging for people used to patterns translatable from one organization to another - that is by definition, good architects. Not that these patterns don't exist - they absolutely exist, which makes it so tempting for an architect to generalize. The application of these patterns, however, is completely dependent on recognition of organizational behavior impact on architecture. Judging from the various trade publications and analyst predictions, the EA group is not usually successful in that application, which is why there is so much grousing about value of having such highly compensated resources around.
16 hours ago
