Like human or societal evolution, all enterprises change most of the time in one way or the other. Such changes are mostly initiated by external forces (Government and contractor support) or internal strategies and can affect any enterprise function, asset, strategy, goals or its clients. Hence, successful organizations need to be very flexible and be able to use tools that’ll help it deal with the problems involved in analyzing and implementing potential changes.

Why Enterprise Architecture (EA) is slow to be incorporated into the corporate culture:
  • Surprise and fear of the unknown: When innovative or radically different changes are introduced without warning, affected corporate sectors, or employees become fearful of the implications. Intimidating changes on corporate goals can cause the company to doubt its capabilities. Self-doubt erodes self-confidence and cripples company growth and development.
  • Climate and mistrust also plays a role in impeding and slowing EA deployment. Mutual mistrust among stakeholders can doom to failure an otherwise well-conceived change.
  • Fear of failure as a result of disrupting cultural traditions. Whenever changes are introduced in a company, cultural and group dynamics are thrown into disequilibrium. As a result, EA is slow to be incorporated into the corporate culture.  
  • Sometimes EA is slow to be incorporated into the corporate culture is due to poor timing. Undue resistance can occur because changes are introduced in an insensitive manner or at awkward time. Proposed organizational changes are more likely to be accepted by others when corporate managers effectively explain or sell the value of the propose change. Explaining that it is strategically important to the long-term success of the organization can help nail this point home.
Adoption of EA should be fairly easy by now, because:
  • Most people in developed countries are progressively more accustomed computer literacy.
  • The advances in communication technology,
  • Adoption of standards supporting interoperability and computing power.
  • Security information infrastructure offers an opportunity to consistently and efficiently secure and improve the integrity of multiple applications
Challenges:
  • Lack of single unifying infrastructure, coupled with differences in implications, applications, and data structures increase the difficulty of sharing information at different levels
  • Government rules and regulations strongly influence how new technologies, tasks and skills are introduced
  • Existing strategies and policies may be inadequate to address new kinds of internal and external relationships, and to exploit new delivery channels
Solution:
Change management;
  • Information technology management
  • Strategic management
  • Process management

Change management helps companies to evaluate the impact of each new technology on their markets/industry and determine an adoption tactic that is aligned with the company's broader strategies. Related to the above, it also provides means of technology addition by predicting the impact of new components on the baseline system. Hence, failures could be ward off if the engineers have a way to forecast it.

Furthermore, another impact of change planning on the Architecture could increase the efficiency and efficacy of technology research and validation by providing a formalized architecture methodology and tools that support the systems engineering process. Thus reducing risk of implementation failure, ability to access and leverage commercial best practices, and following a government approved architecture validation process.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) Change Management Checklist:
  • How can we clearly communicate with clients about the ways information architecture paves the way  for positive change?
  • What role does physical assets play in helping a team and a company share a vision for change? 
  • Does the organization follow a written policy for implementing software process improvement?
  • How do we help our clients, and their employees or customers, adapt to and embrace change? 
  • Is training in software process improvement required for both management and technical staff?
  • How can we change the perception that EA is just a step in service provision process?
  • Are software process improvement activities reviewed with senior management on a periodic basis?
  • etc...
It is still very hard to effectively measure the success Enterprise Architecture since it is still under metamorphosis.

However, an effective EA should provide the following:
1.    Cost efficiencies
2.    Improved operational service quality
3.    Improved operational alignment of value chain resources: people, process, and technology
4.    Improved business and customer alignment
5.    Change-tolerant and non- fragile results
6.    Backing from Senior Management
7.    Performance & Results-Based Management
8.    Security & Information Assurance