The best description of EA, what it is and why it is important, we have found on Youtube. The creator is called Gerben Wierda and he has created this content together with the media agency New Narrative.
The video could be found here. It takes around 4 minutes to watch and it is worth it to watch multiple times. We'd recommend to use this for introducing and describing enterprise architecture in your organization.
He describes the video as follows:
Meet Michael, he works at a your company. He needs support from IT to do his job, so they cater to his wishes. But Michael is not alone and many Michaels later a Hairball Architecture will grow unless you use Enterprise Architecture (EA) to prevent that. EA is not just about some guidelines and principles, it is a process that makes sure the constant changes that inevitably happen in your landscape are good for your company as a whole and over time, not just good for the problem at hand. The animation stresses the chaos-prevention goal of enterprise architecture and only touches lightly on the fit-for-the-future goal of enterprise architecture (at the end). Some architects (see comments below) say it wrongly depicts EA as too much about IT. I've posted a longer reply here: http://enterprisechess.com/2015/04/27... The animation and narrative was created by New Narrative (https://www.newnarrative.media) based on interviews with me (the underlying message is mine, the way it is presented has been designed by New Narrative, I OK'ed the final script). This animation can be freely used 'as is'. If you want an adapted version, please contact me for the approval (as I represent the publishing rights, info@masteringarchimate.com) and you will need to work with New Narrative for changes (as they are the owner of the animation). McDonalds and the Bank of Scotland are some of the organisations that have made customised versions for internal use. If you use this for your practice, I'd appreciate that you let me know. I know of several large enterprises that are now using this. If you want to know more about the philosophy behind this video, go to http://enterprisechess.com