This article introduces a contemporary perspective on the evolution of Enterprise Architecture (EA). The article argues that there is always architecture in place in an enterprise,and hence EA is really about the mastery of the architecture of the enterprise. A well-architected, well-functioning and well-documented enterprise is a coherent enterprise, which is why EA is fundamentally about managing coherency in the enterprise. The article then presents some future challenges for EA in practice, and provides some suggestions for practitioners.

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Dr. John Gøtze currently serves as President of the Association of Enterprise Architects (a|EA). He is also co-founder of iEAi, the International Enterprise Architecture Institute; a lecturer at Copenhagen Business School and at the Danish IT University; co-founder of the Danish think-tank EA Fellows, and runs Carnegie Mellon University's EA-certification programme in Europe. His new book, Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance, co-edited with Gary Doucet, Scott Bernard and Pallab Saha, is out this summer. Previously, he served as enterprise architect at the National IT and Telecom Agency in Copenhagen, and participated in developing the Danish national policy for a government-wide enterprise architecture. Earlier, he worked for the Swedish Agency for Administrative Development as head of section with BPR and IT-strategy as responsibilities. He holds a PhD in Participatory Urban Design and a M.Sc. in Engineering, both from the Technical University of Denmark.