While many authors have published on the subject, the question about the value of Enterprise Architecture (EA) remains unanswered. Using the four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard as a starting point, 36 subcategories of organizational goals where benefits of EA could be expected were derived from literature. To validate these subcategories, an online Delphi study has been carried out. With the help of the experts contributing to the study, 24 subcategories of organizational goals are identified where the contribution of EA is assessed in the range from ‘moderate’ to ‘very much’. The contribution allocated to these subcategories is more or less in line with other publications on the subject, with the notable exception of subcategories in the Customer perspective of the Balanced Scorecard. In our study these subcategories were deemed more important than in previous studies.
In the same Delphi study, we tried to differentiate between development-, implementation- and exploitation activities of EA with respect to the contribution of EA to these 24 subcategories, but the results are as yet inconclusive