# Towards the Definition of Enterprise Architecture Debts

## TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of Enterprise Architecture Debt (EA Debt) to holistically assess risks and failures in EA implementation, emphasizing its impact on EA quality and business risk.

## Contribution

It proposes a new metaphor for understanding EA implementation failures, integrating IT and business perspectives often overlooked in existing technical debt models.

## Key findings

- EA Debt negatively affects EA quality
- EA Debt increases business risk
- EA implementation success is linked to managing EA Debt

## Abstract

In the software development industry, technical debt is regarded as a critical issue in term of the negative consequences such as increased software development cost, low product quality, decreased maintainability, and slowed progress to the long-term success of developing software. However, despite the vast research contributions in technical debt management for software engineering, the idea of technical debt fails to provide a holistic consideration to include both IT and business aspects. Further, implementing an enterprise architecture (EA) project might not always be a success due to uncertainty and unavailability of resources. Therefore, we relate the consequences of EA implementation failure with a new metaphor --Enterprise Architecture Debt (EA Debt). We anticipate that the accumulation of EA Debt will negatively influence EA quality, also expose the business into risk.