A better use of our time
Last week, I was analyzing the raw data of this year's enterprise architecture survey (the last one is here). Why don't you do EA? "We don't believe that the traditional EA program is the most effective use of our time." Wow!
On Thursday, I met one of our customers. The person I spoke to was in charge of Architecture for the organization. And the starting point of the discussion was: "We have a huge transformation programme going on. We really do not have time to do Enterprise Architecture".
We have all seen these wonderful EA programmes, which spent two years documenting the current state before starting to look at the future. And those progammes for which the future was a simple "we reinvent the world based on XYZ" (insert CORBA, J2EE, Web Services, SOA...). And what does that mean for our business? Either you get no answer, or you hear abstract statements of "agility", "lower TCO", etc.
Yes, this approach to EA is a waste of time. But how can we do better?
Enterprise Architecture helps organizations aligning their resources in support of their value chain. It is issue driven - it has to start at themes like "How can we align our customer interaction channels with the changing needs of today's population?" And it needs to find answers to the most pressing questions of the organization - now, not in a couple of years.
That was what I discussed with the customer mentioned above.
And we agree that it was a good use of time.
Thomas Obitz
Principal Architect and EA Evangelist EMEA
