Enterprise Architecture: A Business Value Realization Model

Today, as organizations face constant change, they must rapidly adapt their strategies and operations. This involves continuous business transformation. However, guiding and managing such transformation can be an intimidating task because of organizational complexity. Hence, organizations resort to Enterprise Architecture (EA) to address this complexity and achieve their transformation goals. Nonetheless, there is a lack of research on EA benefits realization and a dearth of conclusive evidence on how EA enables business transformation and delivers value to organizations. Therefore, this research uses a case study method to explore how EA investment is converted into organizational value. This research makes two contributions. The first of these is the development of an EA value realization model, which comprises three iterative and interrelated processes: the EA conversion process, the EA use process, and the EA competitive process. The second contribution is the identification of factors that may influence the value realization process.