The Contribution of Enterprise Architecture to the Achievement of Organizational Goals: A Review of the Evidence

This paper reports the ndings of a systematic review on the literature concerning the potential contribution of Enterprise Architecture (EA) to the achievement of various business goals. The review revealed the current state of the scienti c and practitioner's literature concerning the potential bene ts of EA as describing 29 unique contexts within which EA has been found to deliver 100 unique bene ts through 3 value-generative mechanisms. This review enhances the understanding of EA of both researchers and practitioners by providing valuable information on the potential bene ts of EA and their relationships, their applicability (context), and the mechanisms that generate them. Additionally, this review is expected to enable practitioners to establish the business case for EA by means of scienti cally grounded reasoning about how EA might contribute to the achievement of certain business goals.