"[1] The fundamental prerequisites for effective EAM are a current, consistent baseline of information about the as-is landscape and an integrated planning process from demand to budget to reach the to-be landscape.
[citation needed] As IT architectural layers, business support processes, and organizational structures become more sophisticated and prone to constant change, EAM will only result in haphazard business and IT alignment if the primary focus is on delivering sets of technically based models.
This approach is only helpful insofar as it depicts the enterprise architecture as a snapshot in time, but it offers no reiterative process support to develop architecture solutions and test against different scenarios, benchmarks, and standards as dictated by the ever converging business and IT strategy.
[citation needed] Moreover, a model-centric approach is prohibitively time-intensive to keep updated and leaves too much room for error as changes to the architecture occur unchecked and isolated in the heads of small groups of architecture specialists.
[clarification needed][citation needed] An important aspect of this approach is support of collaboration amongst a wide group of stakeholders from both business and IT including C-level, IT strategists, planning teams, technology implementers, and business analysts, who contribute to the EA management and planning process.