An international survey on the use of Enterprise Architecture (EA) as a management tool is being conducted out of the Netherlands.

All IFIP members, your colleagues and peers are invited to participate in the research, which seeks to enhance the effectiveness of EA.

According to Dr Martin can den Berg, one of four  researchers behind the project, EA is not a game in itself, but has various serious goals, including supporting the process of decision making.

“With this survey, we will analyze the relationship between the maturity of EA and the quality of IT investment decisions,” he said.

Dr van den Berg, along with his colleagues: Dr Raymond Slot, Dr Marlies van Steenbergen and Professor Hans van Vliet, believe the IT investment decision is one of the five interrelated IT decisions that every enterprise must address and is often the most visible and controversial: “some projects will be approved, others are bounced” [Weill].

Not every IT investment is successful. The CHAOS Report indicates that in 2015 only 29 per cent of projects were successful, i.e. on time, on budget and with a satisfactory result. Nineteen per cent of all projects failed and 52 per cent were challenged [Standish Group]. The high failure rates of projects indicates that IT investment decision are both difficult and risky.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a mechanism to support IT decision-making [Op ’t Land]. EA is supposed to provide guidance at moments of decision-making [Johnson, Jansen]. Various literature reviews indicate that EA leads to better decisions [Tamm, Boucharas]. One of the aims of EA is reduced risk of future IT investments [Open Group]. There is broad consensus that the EA discipline should guide and inform IT investment decisions [Blosch, Gøtze, Buchanan, CIO-Council].

However, despite these promises, there is little evidence that EA actually contributes to IT investment decisions.

“By means of this research, we aim to investigate the relationship between the maturity of an EA practice and the quality of IT investment decisions. Based on the promises of EA, one would expect at least a correlation between these variables: the more mature the EA practice, the higher the quality of IT investment decisions,” said the research team.

The survey is anonymous. The answers provided will only be used for this research and will be treated confidentially. At the end of the survey, you can leave an email address if you would like to receive a personal copy of the results.
Please visit this link https://nl.surveymonkey.com/r/ZVHWQFH to participate in the survey and thank you for contributing to this important research project.