Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight...

There is lots of good information in the blogosphere on the discipline of enterprise architecture. Likewise, there is more bad useless information than good. Figured I would critique several blogs in hopes of guiding my peers in the industry in the right direction...


Before we start this discussion, it is best to separate the good from the bad. I have done so via headings.

Good Blogs

• Enterprise Design Strategy: Many consultants in this space don't provide value, only consulting products but I can say that Jurgens is different. I think folks would be well-served by reading his blog and hiring him to solve problems they face...


• Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture: Many folks know that I advocate deep understanding of service-oriented architectures as part of an EA agenda. Others within the community have stated with passion that if you don't do EA, you can't do SOA! Nothing could be further from the truth. The real question that remains to be answered is how to integrate EA and SOA. SOA will change how IT will integrate the enterprise (business and technical) and this blog attempts to answer this question...


• Musings and Ruminations on Building Great Systems: Simply, Dion gets it. He is not pumping up his opportunities for consulting nor pushing a tool but instead attempting to teach folks who have an interest in building great software how to think correctly.


• ERP4IT: Charles is an enterprise architect for a Fortune 100 enterprise and understands EA very deeply. He is not selling anything but simply communicating what he has learned in the trenches. Many of his postings contains gems and should be carefully read and re-read. As I understand, he is also working on a book. I would be honored to provide an endorsement for the back cover.


• The Boris Files: He talks deeply about the secrets of successful CIOs in the human voice with no bullshit. He is a straight shooter filled with integrity. I would love to hire him for our EA team.


• Ramblin Gamblin discusses his perspective of enterprise architecture from the perspective of a software engineer. Need to hear more about the consumers of our work effort

Bad Blogs

Enterprise Architecture in Government: It is a shame that the folks in the federal government think that EA is all about process. There is no notion whatsoever about any business process or building an extended enterprise. The government in their architecture only talk about interoperability amongst themselves and other forms of <> but nothing on collaboration. Maybe they should seriously consider dropping all EA efforts and the expensive consultants who sap taxpayer dollars creating them and simply start from scratch. EA is not about conformance of contractors...

Martin Fowler: He is stepping way beyond his bounds in understanding the value that EA brings. I would like to think that the reason he speaks about it isn't because his consulting firm hasn't figured out how to sell it? He is correct in the need to achieve balance, but this is only relevant to those shops who use the term enterprise architecture to describe the practice of building ivory towers. For the real practitioners, his advice is somewhat questionable...

Making EA Work: Seems to be all about pushing tools. Real practitioners understand that people, process and tools (in that order) are how things should be approached. Maybe if they started talking about things relevant to people, it would be more credible.

SOA and Enterprise Architecture Conferences: Supporter of conferences that cause lots of advertising dollars to be generated but not of useful exchanges of information in the community. The real leaders don't work for software vendors who present at conferences as they are too busy adding value to their own enterprise.

Dana Dolan's Technology Watch: The media perspective on this subject is interesting. Doesn't seem like Dana actually talks with real EA's but instead gets information from other sources of questionable ethic such as government entities, other magazines, software vendors and industry analysts. Maybe Dana would be better served by talking with real practitioners.

Hopefully you have developed a better understanding of what is good information on the discipline of enterprise architecture and what stuff you should ignore!
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