Enterprise Architecture Coming of Age Increasing the Performance of an Emerging Discipline

Based on interviews with a number of architects and managers from a wide range of organizations, we characterize how EA is perceived and applied in practice. The key aspects of how EA is perceived in practice are that EA is: a means of abstraction, a means of communication, and a governance instrument. The key critical success factors for applying EA in practice are: the acceptance of EA driven organizational changes, the availability of efficient EA means, and the proper usage of EA. We identify three groups of organizations that differ with respect to their level of architectural maturity and alignment: organizations where architecture awareness starts with either business management or the IT department, and consultancy firms. Analysis of the interviews indicates that these three groups differ in the architecture aspects and critical success factors they emphasize. Our results provide a starting point for assessing architecture maturity and alignment within organizations, and can be used to help harmonize different architectural tunes being played within organizations. The results presented in this chapter show that merely focusing on improving EA as a means of abstraction, and developing more efficient EA means is not enough. Other aspects and critical success factors are perceived to also play an important role in successfully applying EA as a means in practice. Therefore, we conclude that to be effective with EA, it is essential to have better understanding of all the elements that constitute the organizational function responsible for composing and implementing the EA, the EA function.