Effects Based Operations (EBO) is a way of thinking for planning, executing, and assessing any operations for the effects they produce, rather than dealing with actions, targets or even objectives. The literature on EBO has been growing day by day; however, there is still a need for modeling techniques and tools that provide more efficient and effective effects based assessment, planning and analysis in order to further develop the capabilities of the operations. In this context, this paper presents an introduction to EBO by focusing on its methodology and its challenges. Moreover, this paper illustrates the importance of modular architecting in effects based planning stage. Modular architecting provides synchronization of the right actions and decisions, makes strategic aim consideration easier and provides efficiency in the cases where there are multiple strategic aims. The most important benefit of this study is its ability to facilitate the achievement of economy of national power for military EBO and economy of action sources for other systems. Approaches presented in this paper utilize clustering of effects and actions by using a Neural Network tool which is called Adaptive Resonance Theory. The application of the approach is illustrated with an example of the defense industry on the development of a modular EBO architecture, which can also be applied to other industries.