Recently, I read one great scientific article about Benefits of Enterprise Architecture (EA), which actually reviewed decent amount of existing literature and practice in regard to this topic [1]. The result of this action is the great list of EA benefits. So, if you ever need to justify the idea of EA, here is the list of the benefits:
- Provides a holistic view of the enterprise
- Improved alignment to business strategy
- Improved alignment with partners
- Improved asset management
- Improved business processes
- Improved business-IT alignment
- Improved change management
- Improved communication
- Improved customer orientation
- Improved decision making
- Improved innovation
- Improved management of IT investments
- Improved risk management
- Improved staff management
- Improved strategic agility
- Increased economies of scale
- Increased efficiency
- Increased interoperability and integration
- Increased market value
- Increased quality
- Increased reusability
- Increased stability
- Increased standardization
- Reduced complexity
- Reduced costs
- Shortened cycle times
- Evolutionary EA development & governance
I wouldn’t remove anything from this list, but I would add three additional aspects that can be observed as benefits of EA as well:
- Better agility
- Common understanding
- Sufficient documentation
So, in the case you are ever confronted with the situation where you have to justify EA or the idea of introducing EA in your company, you can use this list to legitimate your opinion. Of course, not every benefit would be applicable in every company or in any given scenario, however, most of them are.
If you however have any other benefits on your mind that should be on the list, please provide them in the comments.
References:
1. Niemi, E. (2008). Enterprise Architecture Benefits: Perceptions from Literature and Practice. In: Niemi, E., Ylimäki, T. & Hämäläinen, N. (Eds.) Evaluation of enterprise and software architectures : critical issues, metrics and practices : [AISA Project 2005-2008]. University of Jyväskylä, Information Technology Research Institute, 2008.