Dear Chris,
EA engagements are naturally costly and complex by themselves. By adding the scenario factor to the assessments, and possibly blueprinting alternative future models you'll probably hit resource limits sooner than delivering so much value.
In my opinion, a possible way to reduce the impact of such changes is to make the EA governance process more proactive and agile. I also believe from corporate point of view, the transition from current strategy to new strategy is a comprehensive exercise. That means there is enough space for EA to cope with new scenarios in a timely manner.
Being proactive and agile in governance can be achieved by tuning the level of granularity in architecture models and tools employed for managing them.

Thanks
Mehrdad Fatemi

enterprise architecture planning involves the following basics steps

1. Identify business areas relevant to the organization
2. Map IT application systems to business areas
3. Identify the systems that need enhancement
4. Identify the systems still not in place
5. Supporting technologies already in place
6. Technologies to be planned
7. Choices of systems i.e inhouse , off-the-shelf, off-the-shelf & customize
8. Technology choices for eg. Centralized , Decentralized, decentralized but regular automatic updation to central server
9. Security issues
10. Business continuity plan
11. Investment plan
12. ROI

EA plan done in the above method can be revised depending on the top management priority and so the plan does not collapse by mere change of CEO. It only gets revised based on the new person’s inputs.

Scenario-based planning is inevitable for an enterprise architect. The changing business models, organizational dynamics, and disruptive technology are some of the change agents that require enterprise architecture strategy to be agile enough to respond to these changes.

I have a detailed post at:
http://cloudcomputing.blogspot.com/2008/02/scenario-based-enterprise-architecture.html

Hello Chris,

- I enjoyed reading your article! The article was informative and insightful. However, I found that the article perpetuates a perception that is common in many organizations. This perception is that enterprise architecture (EA) is exclusively an IT enabler. Your article focuses on EA as an IT enabler when EA is actually an enterprise enabler that facilitates enterprise planning, decision-making, and strategic execution.

- The EA describes the enterprise and its human, materiel, and IT attributes that enable organizational leaders to understand enterprise capabilities and constraints. As a result, organizational leaders can make needed human, materiel, and technology investments to realize strategic goals and objectives. The EA is not exclusively about the enterprise IT capabilities as is suggested in your article.

- Organizations such as Wal-Mart, UPS, and Southwest Airlines continue to lead their respective industries because they understand their enterprise capabilities and constraints, describe desired capabilities, and make human, materiel, and technology decisions that advance accomplishing strategic goals. In other words these organizations use EA to facilitate enterprise planning, decision-making, and execution.

- EA advocates can help their organizations meet strategic performance expectations by advancing EA as an EA enabler rather than exclusively an IT enabler.

Stan Boddie