The 3 Types of EA Metrics

There are 3 fundamental ways to measure the performance of your EA team:

1. Measure IT
IT metrics are well established — ROI, Total Cost of Ownership, Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) etc..

Such IT metrics are SMART and appeal to the business. They are good measures for IT — but do they translate to EA?

In theory the EA team should be able to increase ROI for IT, reduce Total Cost of Ownership etc… However, there are many factors affecting these measures. The correlation between EA performance and IT metrics may be low.

2. Measure EA Governance
It is relatively easy to measure the success of IT governance. What percentage of projects complied with governance? What percentage of projects were rejected? The problem with these metrics is that they lack appeal for the business.

It is not obvious how governance metrics translate into competitive advantage, customer experience or cost savings.

3. Measure EA Itself
Measuring EA directly is the ideal way to score the EA team. The problem is it is tricky to develop such metrics. The EA team collaborates with business, solution and governance teams.

The fact is that it is difficult to assign a number to collaborative long term planning activities such as EA.