Looking for a five-legged sheep: Identifying enterprise architects' skills and competencies

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a holistic approach to comprehend the organization's business objectives and processes, data resources, information systems and information technologies. To advance EA activities, organizations need a myriad of different skills and competences both from individual enterprise architects and from architect teams. However, research on these skills and competences is scarce. Not knowing what skills are actually needed might be one of the reasons why public sector EA endeavors have been very problematic. In this paper, we conduct a qualitative survey among enterprise architects themselves to identify which skills they consider essential for EA work. Our results indicate that the range of skills is great, and finding an expert with all appropriate competencies is like looking for a fivelegged sheep.