There are great shifts that happen in technology and culture. Sometimes they occur sequentially, as WWII created a need for advanced computing, and the PC forever changed the nature of work. Sometimes they happen concurrently, where pressures, both positive and negative, take place in tandem. We are in such a time of change now, with great crises and great opportunities for organizations and the people who love them. One of these challenges is the failure of Enterprise, Business and Technical architecture. Why do the Three Stooges so often stumble and fail?
When ModernAnalyst asked me to propose an article for their issue on Enterprise Architecture, I thought about the question framework developed by John Zachman, that provides the basic building blocks of that practice. The primary function of a Business Analyst is to ask questions that uncover requirements then to document those requirements so they may be developed into a useful, useable system.
As budgets tighten and organizations continue trying to achieve return on investment faster, cheaper and with better results, they are trying to create and evolve their overall enterprise architecture.
If the object you are trying to create is so simple that you can see it in its entirety at a glance and remember how all of its components fit together at excruciating level of detail all at one time, you don’t need Architecture. You can "wing it" and see if it works. It is only when the object you are trying to create is complex to the extent that you can’t see and remember all the details of the implementation at once, and only when you want to accommodate on-going change to the instantiated object, that Architecture is IMPERATIVE. Once again, without Architecture, you are not going to be able to create an object of any complexity and you won’t be able to change it (that is, change it in minimum time, with minimum disruption and minimum cost).
Two years ago, some of my friends pressed me intensely to be more definitive about the Framework concepts. Even though, I had written “The Book”, they were specifically asking me for definitions of the entities that comprise the metamodel of Row 2 of the Enterprise Framework. It has taken me and a team of dedicated folks two years, however we have progressed far beyond the original requirement.
Billions of dollars earmarked for new technologies, at the same time billion-dollar projects are failing. Virtual teams who can’t implement Virtualization. Service Oriented Architecture when customers are no longer oriented towards your services.
Where can you turn to? Who can you trust?
Enterprise Business Analysis is the solution
EBA is Strategic, Process and Organizational Consulting: o Strategic – Planning and execution. o Process – the steps. o Organizational – the whole enchilada. o Consulting - Internal or external, the combination of expertise and intuition, Techne and Poesis, improvisation and practice in planning and supporting the enchilada’s goals.
You are already familiar with EBA, under its many masks for the diagnosis of the patient, and prescription for the cure:
Author: Sam Cherubin
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