Getting the most from your enterprise architecture

It should be clear that many things drive an enterprise architecture's (EAs) value and that the EA effort provides you only the opportunity to create value. Organizations that have discovered this the hard way may be saddled with a failing EA. It is not necessarily too late to revive it. By improving the architecting process, strengthening your chief architect's competencies, or refining the architecture products, you will eventually reenergize the EA and make it successful. The value assessors give you an idea of the work involved, but they are only a framework. How much value an organization actually gets from its architecture depends on many factors. Nonetheless, knowing what makes an architecture valuable will provide you with a solid foundation for the difficult job ahead.