10.28.10
Enterprise Architecture, Trick or Treat?
[Cartoon]
The treat of Enterprise Architecture is providing business agility through the reuse of business and technology components. The trick is that to get the treats there must be discipline.
Enter the world of the Enterprise Architect. Everything is componentized. Anything can be connected to anything else, even external partners. Everything operates in a single environment where the feedback from the monitoring systems provides alerts for any significant issues.
The treats from this world are conceptually obvious. But, they are not so obvious when actually implemented. Building the infrastructure to support all of the treats can be costly. Building the business components for reuse is more expensive than doing one-offs. The “big picture” of the perfect world of the Enterprise Architect comes with a big price tag.
The trick is to get all the treats by providing a discipline that everyone finds beneficial to their projects. This is difficult since reuse of a business component does not usually benefit the original creators of the service. In fact, in most cases, the users of a reusable business service need more than the originally created service offers.
It becomes very easy for a development group to convince their management that the discipline expected is not right for their project. Their project is right now and the Enterprise Architect discipline only brings value when another project comes along. No one can predict the future project requirements, so how could anyone build a reusable component without knowing how it might be reused? This is a good question.
The Enterprise Architect can help solve this challenge. Many would recommend that the key is in selling the concepts to the development staff. In other words, get them on your side. Others are convinced that discipline can only occur through senior management ownership of the principles of Enterprise Architecture. This is a version of “command and control”.
These are good approaches and they do work. A better approach is simplicity. If the development process complexity is reduced by applying componentization, it will be used. The developers will want to use it, because it allows them to get their project done more quickly and with greater quality. The senior management will like this approach since they are not asked to be the arbitrator on what they see as technology issues.
Enterprise Architect done right is a treat. The trick is to do it right. Seek senior level, proven Enterprise Architects and get a real business treat.
Enterprise Architects are well-aware of the continuing evolution of technology. They creatively look for technology convergence that can provide breakthroughs in thinking. We are at one of those convergent junctions today. What is about to happen will give non-professional information technologists control of their use of automation in their business. No longer will they simply peer through windows and see only what applications let them see. They will be able to go inside, see how things work, and control their automation. – Enterprise Architects Masters of the Unseen City
Closing the Business / IT gap.
