Thursday, June 22, 2006
How to pretend you are an Enterprise Architect and not get caught
Awhile back, I told you how to pretend you are an industry analyst and not get caught and figured I was overdue on telling you the same thing about enterprise architects...
1. Invite lots of people to useless unproductive meetings. Especially target folks in the enterprise who neither have any interest in your agenda nor even know why they have been invited in the first place. Your opening phrase should be: Let's go around the table.
2. Feel good that you were successful in shutting down a major project that could have provide immense business value in the name of governance.
3. Eschew open source. We all no that we cannot possibly embrace by directly interacting with the community and cannot break our habits of having to buy it from a vendor. After all, who will do Powerpoint for us?
4. Avoid those pesky software developers. Instead hang out with the project management and business analyst crowd. This establishes a persona that you are really aligning yourself with business goals. Besides, your technical knowledge regardless of how deep or not will be enough to impress this crowd.
5. Over time, acknowledge that as your own technical abilities fade, start stating in a prominent manner that architects don't need to be technical in order to be successful so that you maintain a position of control.
6. Ignore small industry analyst firms. They actually have a clue and useful insights but this doesn't really matter. What is important is to consume research about marketshare and vision which will really help you with the integration problems you are struggling with. Besides, quotes from large analyst firms provide an escape clause whenever a project fails.
7. Read Dilbert cartoons. Don't find humor in them though and instead consider incorporating some of his deeper observations into the EA methodology.
8. Evangelize EA and SOA practices, but don't actually buy any books on the topic so you can gain a deeper understanding and instead when talking tell folks the importance of keeping things at the high level.
9. Don't spend $600K delivering valuable working software that can solve business goals. Instead, consider hiring your favoriteinsultingconsulting firm and have them assist you in developing a "strategy" which is our secret code word for PowerPoint copied from your competitors and all of their hard work.
10. Use the following words in at least every other sentence that is uttered: synergy, collaboration, alignment, business and strategy.
11. Before starting any discussion, immediately apologize to the listener indicating that you may not know all of the right terminology but that you are simply going to use analogies to explain a concept. We all know that this means that doing your homework isn't really important and generalities allow you to not be held accountable...
| | View blog reactions1. Invite lots of people to useless unproductive meetings. Especially target folks in the enterprise who neither have any interest in your agenda nor even know why they have been invited in the first place. Your opening phrase should be: Let's go around the table.
2. Feel good that you were successful in shutting down a major project that could have provide immense business value in the name of governance.
3. Eschew open source. We all no that we cannot possibly embrace by directly interacting with the community and cannot break our habits of having to buy it from a vendor. After all, who will do Powerpoint for us?
4. Avoid those pesky software developers. Instead hang out with the project management and business analyst crowd. This establishes a persona that you are really aligning yourself with business goals. Besides, your technical knowledge regardless of how deep or not will be enough to impress this crowd.
5. Over time, acknowledge that as your own technical abilities fade, start stating in a prominent manner that architects don't need to be technical in order to be successful so that you maintain a position of control.
6. Ignore small industry analyst firms. They actually have a clue and useful insights but this doesn't really matter. What is important is to consume research about marketshare and vision which will really help you with the integration problems you are struggling with. Besides, quotes from large analyst firms provide an escape clause whenever a project fails.
7. Read Dilbert cartoons. Don't find humor in them though and instead consider incorporating some of his deeper observations into the EA methodology.
8. Evangelize EA and SOA practices, but don't actually buy any books on the topic so you can gain a deeper understanding and instead when talking tell folks the importance of keeping things at the high level.
9. Don't spend $600K delivering valuable working software that can solve business goals. Instead, consider hiring your favorite
10. Use the following words in at least every other sentence that is uttered: synergy, collaboration, alignment, business and strategy.
11. Before starting any discussion, immediately apologize to the listener indicating that you may not know all of the right terminology but that you are simply going to use analogies to explain a concept. We all know that this means that doing your homework isn't really important and generalities allow you to not be held accountable...
