Realization of Enterprise Architecture (EA) Benefits - A Meta Study on Control and Controllability

Realization of Enterprise Architecture (EA) benefits is a topic not well researched, despite the fact that EA has been in focus among both practitioners and researchers for many years. Based on a literature review and nine semi-structured interviews, this research investigates control and controllability in terms of measurability and traceability. The findings reveal that there are evident challenges in reality and the reason for such reality varies from one situation to another. The interviews suggest that hard ways/approaches, in terms of concrete technical ROI-related metrics, to measure and trace realization of EA benefits convincingly, quantitatively and effectively is still absent. It could be concluded that control and controllability concern not only technical issues, but also socio-political-cultural issues. This research contributes by revealing the many challenges in control of realization of EA benefits and by analyzing the ‘what and why’ of the reality.

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