EA value measures ? who cares?

And on that note, I have just received the draft ISO/IEEE 1471. I quite like what it says (quoted below), and fits in nicely into this discussion.

< snip >

An architecture description includes one or more architecture views (3.9). Each architecture view (or simply, view) addresses some of the architecture-related concerns held by the stakeholders of the system.

NOTE 3 This International Standard does not use phrases such as “business architecture”, “physical architecture”, and “technical architecture”. In the terms of this International Standard, equivalents of these phrases are “business view”, “physical view”, and “technical view”, respectively.

< /snip >

There can be only ONE architecture!!!

Kind regards,
Joseph

PS: Why... :-(

On 25 June, 15:44, Rheinlander Kirk wrote:

> Kewl! I agree completely! Awesome!

> Now if everyone else would get it :-(

> On Jun 25, 2009, at 7:20 AM, Joseph George wrote:

> > Kirk,

> > Yes, EA is about strategy. And I am not talking about a separate
> > technology strategy. There is only one strategy - and that is about
> > the business! Any technology (or other disciplines of) strategies are
> > part of the core business strategy, and firmly integrated together
> > within the enterprise. Any other way of doing this creates a white
> > elephant, for the sake of itself. A few years down the line, no one
> > understands why we are spending £££s of some black boxes... So, the
> > organisation continues to waste precious resources hoping nothing
> > breaks!?! The only winners are the Vendor$$$, and it is in their best
> > interests to keep the decision-makers in the dark, hoping they will
> > keep coughing up money for whatever sh.t they keep dumping on
> > customers.

> > As per the above, I don't believe in having a separate ETA as you say
> > below. There is only one EA, and everything fits in there. Or the
> > enterprise ends up being disconnected... as we perhaps see it now.

> > Best regards,
> > Joseph

> > On 24 June, 20:00, Rheinlander Kirk wrote:
> >> I think I might suggest modifying your comment slightly.

> >> EA, as COMMONLY (not currently) practiced, does not have much input
> >> into strategy.

> >> AND I strongly disagree .......

> >> From my experience, the EA is the prime protagonist of strategy. In
> >> nearly 100% of my EA engagements, the strategic planning process was
> >> delivering a 3-5 year financial plan; nothing that I would construe
> >> to
> >> be vaguely related to strategy. In every case, we revamped the
> >> strategic planning process to produce true strategic initiatives
> >> using
> >> a seeded topic list, and going through the SWOT (internal strengths
> >> and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats) to extract a
> >> set of strategic initiatives, derive a set of supporting business
> >> initiatives, and develop a balanced scorecard set of metrics against
> >> each strategy.

> >> THIS was the marching orders for the EA effort - communicating this
> >> strategy, and coordinating the business initiatives across all
> >> functional organizations, in order to effectively deliver against
> >> strategy.

> >> EA without strategy, is the blind leading the blind.

> >> However, if you practice enterprise TECHNOLOGY architecture, then
> >> sure, ETA does not have much to do with strategy input.

> >> --Kirk

> >> On Jun 24, 2009, at 8:02 AM, Joseph George wrote:

> >>> Graham,

> >>>> I am not convinced that EA has much input to strategy as currently
> >>>> deployed by most companies , the savings come frequently from IT,
> >>>> such as server or applications consolidation , none of which is
> >>>> actually business strategy. Business is comprised of several
> >>>> disciplines such as Strategy, Planning , Operational execution ,
> >>>> Resource management , finance and more latterly Information
> >>>> technology . EA rarely addresses any of these , its simply an
> >>>> enabler in one or more of them.

> >>> As currently practised, EA does not have much input into strategy.
> >>> In
> >>> a ideal world, strategy would be formulated based on EA
> >>> recommendations. But, EA needs to mature and move up the food-chain
> >>> for that to happen. As I see it, EA seems to be getting dragged into
> >>> creating lower and lower level details, possibly because it is
> >>> trying
> >>> to be everything for everyone.

> >>> One of the goals of EA is to increase the Operational Efficiencies,
> >>> and for that EA needs to focus on where the bulk of the expenditure
> >>> (CAPEX, OPEX,...) is spent on. Guess where that might be? That is
> >>> probably what needs to be sorted and where massive savings could be
> >>> gained.

> >>> From what I have seen, EA would always be an enabler! If I could
> >>> *tell* my CEO to do something, then I become more than an enabler...
> >>> But, I guess, I am a long way off from there... Others might be in
> >>> much better positions?

> >>> Best regards,
> >>> Joseph

> >>> On 6 June, 20:12, Rheinlander Kirk wrote:
> >>>> As the organizations create the content of the enterprise
> >>>> architecture, by default, they agree to it.
> >>>> EA just allows communication and coordination across the
> >>>> boundaries,
> >>>> so they know the right things to do.

> >>>> Yes, I cut and pasted a relevant paragraph, rather than retyping
> >>>> the
> >>>> text again, as it had meaning in both contexts.

> >>>> On Jun 6, 2009, at 3:43 AM, C Johnson wrote:

> >>>>> I know where you are coming from, however for this context, if one
> >>>>> does not have a view (or baseline) of the organisations
> >>>>> architecture, then one cannot govern it... where the EA team owns
> >>>>> the process or references it, the business still need to
> >>>>> understand
> >>>>> and agree that the architecture follows what they have and what
> >>>>> they
> >>>>> see for the future (i.e. objectives, goals)