Assess and Optimize EA Capability. Right-size the EA operating model to reap the benefits of EA: improve business-IT alignment, lower costs, and decrease time to production. Enterprise Architecture increases the organization’s ability to provide consistent services, accessible information, scalable infrastructure, and flexible technology integration on demand. It helps bridge the gap between business and IT and creates a shared enterprise vision.

Address the organization’s mandate for Enterprise Architecture (EA) by optimizing EA management practices, EA organization and roles, EA staff competency and capacity, and EA tools. Organizations that do not have an adequate EA capability level frequently experience the following symptoms:Proliferation of applications and redundant applications (i.e. applications with overlapping capabilities and similar purposes).Too many interfaces between applications, high integration costs.Large number of data stores, multiple “sources of truth” for the same piece of data.Inconsistent data, manual re-input of data.High variety of technology platforms.Increasing complexity of the IT environment.Roll-out of enhancements/fixes frequently resulting in services disruptions.Long solution-development time due to high integration complexity and little or no reuse of existing solution components.Increasing inability of adapting legacy systems to new business requirements.Growing variety of IT skills required to maintain the increasingly diversified IT environment.High non-discretionary IT spend. Under-performing enterprise transformation programs.Ineffective applications in supporting enterprise goals.Lack of concept-level documentation on the existing and target business capabilities and IT environments.Assessing and optimizing the EA operating model is the first step in treating the root cause of these symptoms.

http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/assess-and-optimize-ea-capability