Much of what I see in large diversified corporate institutions is the application of EA principles and frameworks, without an underlying mechanism to measure or substantiate through research that EA techniques provide value. The value, could be the result of a hidden value chain (systems thinking), or discrete units of measure (defect reduction or financial indicators such as cost avoided), or perhaps social-cultural through the alignment of individual objectives with that of the enterprise. On the whole, a general lack of research basis seems to exist in the EA value measurement facet, but admittedly my own biases cloud my field of view - which is best remedied by the input of others who see EA differently and perhaps suggest research areas that could support or dismiss EA's core value propositions.
Problably is needed a clarification of some assumptions to develop an EA research areas. This seems to relate to the requirement of a better integration of "tools", e.g. business strategy, business architecture and business processes.
Considering business strategy as an assumption that helps the clarification of the needs for EA research and at the same time of the development of initiatives using axioms defined at top and decomposed until processes level. These elements (business constructs) could facilitate the development of EA initiatives more attuned to the value proposition and business strategy.
In a more personal perspective, I see EA more related to the organization of business processes (architecture) and the research could be direct to processes organization and integration.
I see EA is the alignment tool between Business and Technology from Enterprise perspective.
In my opinion, research on role /value of EA with respect to Business Alignment and the success of Enterprise operations would be important
From my personal point of view questions of how to actually establish all the methods and ideas of EA in the organization, i.e., how to make EA/M effective is a major issue for practitioners trying to grow the discipline in their organizations.
For research this might also open some interesting opportunities. We looked at it from an organizational culture perspective and also from an institutional theory perspective (see paper links). At MIT they follow similar ideas (see link). These ideas are increasingly discussed (also in the MIT paper) as “architectural thinking”.
http://cisr.mit.edu/blog/documents/2012/09/19/2012_0901_architecturelearning_rossquaadgras-pdf/
Article The role of organizational culture for grounding, management...
Conference Paper Institutionalization and the Effectiveness of Enterprise Arc...
I often wonder whether the Enterprise Architecture Practice (That is the group of people within an organization who form the actual EA group) is going the way of chefs in fast food joints. The gaps between research and practice is astonishing. It appears EA as a practice exists in very few organizations where it is not mandated by "executive order", compliance requirement, or to fulfil some short term goal. Even in mandated cases, EA function may be under staffed and underfunded. If this is not my own warped view, something is happening to the EA practice; is it morphing into a new discipline? Or. is it integrating with the many disciplines in organizations?, Perhaps just the beginning of a premature sun-setting in its neophyte cycle? Perhaps some heavy lifting longitudinal studies can share some light, that is if EA Practice is the holy grail for aligning technology to business objectives, as agreed upon by most researchers, why are decision makers 'balking" at the idea of standing up a full fledged Enterprise Architecture Practice?
Frank, I am starting to agree with you. What I am seeing is that traditional native IT capability (as in purchased capability in alignment with a line of business objective) is clearly transitioning to cloud platforms. For those EA's who previously focused on capability based alignment, they miss out on upstream conversations where the business value (not capability) expression occurs outside of EA in the form of initiative management (i.e. some times referred to as Portfolio Management). If EA does not get into that specific forum, where most if not all cloud computing opportunities materialize, it will not be in a position to aid an business unit to pursue innovations that other competitor companies have a hard time accepting. For Example, EA is not driving the FINTECH revolution in consumer banking, yet big banks are looking to partner with constellations of FINTECH's to offer services without EA in the conversation (this is an area of developing research for me). As a result, EA is becoming the lever that CIO's pull to control costs through standardization, demand, and capacity management (e.g. capability management). What I see is not a sun-setting, but a relegation of EA to initiatives focused on RUN, OPERATE, or COMPLIANCE top level business goals, while GROWTH and TRANSFORM business goals are left to the individual business lines and the initiative management space. Interesting that you would mention fast food. McDonald's rebooted their entire restaurant operational architecture in 2016, sans EA. I have a link to the paper on my classroom Twitter feed at @EA_Archie.
Having come into this discipline from information management, am trying to make connections between EA and records management. In this particular aspect I know the ISO is developing a standard https://committee.iso.org/sites/tc46sc11/home/projects/ongoing/records-requirements-in-enterpri.html
My own contribution was a recent conference paper Conference Paper Using Enterprise Architecture as a means of understanding in...
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