In a recent article in Forbes, Jason Bloomberg asks if Enterprise Architecture (EA) is “completely broken”. He reckons it is, and that EA frameworks, such as TOGAF and the Zachman Framework, are at least partly to blame. Here’s what he has to say about frameworks:
EA generally centers on the use of a framework like The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), the Zachman Framework™, or one of a handful of others. Yet while the use of such frameworks can successfully lead to business value, [they] tend to become self-referential… that [Enterprise Architects end up] spending all their effort working with the framework instead of solving real problems.
From experience, I’d have to agree: many architects are so absorbed by frameworks that they overlook their prime imperative, which is to deliver tangible value rather than pretty diagrams.
In this post I present six (possibly heretical!) practices that underpin an evolutionary or emergent approach to enterprise architecture. I believe that these will go some way towards addressing the issues that Bloomberg and others bemoan.
Read the entire article at http://eight2late.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/six-heresies-for-enterprise-architecture/.
