Enterprise architecture management requires an extensive amount of information which concern distinct domains
like company strategy, business processes, and IT-systems. To support management with essential information enterprise
architecture models are reckoned almost indispensable. However, the creation and maintenance of an encompassing
enterprise architecture model has proven to be a challenging task. Very prominent appears to be the
diversity of influential factors and the involved long time period. The evaluation framework presented in this article
is following a holistic approach integrating relevant technical and social factors. In addition, the complex task of controlling
the evolution of the models and their usage is incorporated. The process of judging the economic impact and
interdependencies is supported by the new concept of evaluation chains. To make them directly applicable to the
domain a dedicated reference evaluation chain based on an extensive compilation of existing knowledge on economic
relationships in enterprise architecture modelling is proposed.
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