"Architecting the Enterprise", a panel discussion at DESRIST 2009

I was invited to speak on a panel discussion entitled “Architecting the Enterprise” at DESRIST 2009 (a conference for design researchers) and thought I would share my thoughts on what this community thinks about Enterprise Architecture. But before we begin, what exactly is design research? Simply put, design research investigates the process of designing in all its many fields. It is not the research of the end design.

The discussion was primarily led by enterprise architects from Siemens, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, AT&T, Open Group Architecture and moderated by Penn State U. It was a useful discussion which brought forth the following:

• It continues to have a heavy technology slant with little attention being paid to the business aspect of things.
  
• Little or no attention is paid to the informational/data needs associated with a successful EA program.
  
• The academic community can help in this regard by providing a realistic definition and value of EA in both business school and computer science curricula.
  
• In most organizations, any senior technical architect with a good knowledge of the business is considered an EA. Why? Because he/she has the ability to understand the domain (not the business, mind you; these are two different things) and still talk technese. And then management wonders why there is no business-IT alignment.
  
• Most EA in most organizations probably do not know about the various architectural frameworks much less know the difference. Like I said earlier, most are techies with a sound domain (not business) knowledge.
  
  Sobering thoughts, eh?
  
  

Keeping EA realistic?

Your organization has chartered you with developing a nascent EA program. You gleefully rub your hands and proceed to get to work. First comes the nebulous, then the specifics and then hopefully the applications of the specifics. As you diligently move from one phase, it is very easy to get carried away and look for perfection at every stage. So how do you make sure it is all relevant from your organization’s perspective?


If you take a look at all of the wonderful frameworks that abound the literature today, these are all well thought out and require significant amount of investment both in time, effort and cost. But in reality, are most corporations willing to spend the time and effort to go through a rigorous exercise of aligning/developing to these frameworks?


Sure, some of them will. These are usually organizations for whom process, standardization, precision are necessary aspects of their domain and are most likely in the aerospace, defense, nuclear fields. But for the typical for-profit business entity who can live with a degree of variability in their product offering/service, investing in developing or adapting an enterprise architecture framework is something that they can always put off until next year.


Then, what is the solution. Keep it simple, realistic and always practitioner oriented. Be ready to show ROI at every stage of the game. Keep your value propositions specific and quantifiable as much as possible. In the coming days, I am going to introduce a framework which purports to do just the same. It is called SEAM™.


SEAM™ stands for Simple Enterprise Architecture Management.

Stay tuned.