Monday, June 23, 2008
Enterprise Architecture: Should EA have its own manifesto?
Many schools of thought all have manifestos where they are committed to the notion that you could change people by altering their surroundings...
The Agile Manifesto for software development has been embraced by the masses of tired developers who simply want to develop high-quality valuable working software for their business customers and have grown increasingly disgusted with the chock-a-block so-called best practices vomited by process weenies who have been successful in making IT mediocre and on the path of no return.
If you aren't familiar with the Cluetrain Manifesto, you would come to understand that hyperlinks subvert hierarchy yet EA in most shops neither provides the value it originally sold nor even enables the strategic intent of the business. Nowadays, it seems as if EA serves itself.
Have you seen what the vast majority of enterprise architects in the blogosphere are discussing? Maybe we need to focus on the basics, you know the way we live, work and interact, otherwise known as the human condition. Can we really be successful where we have open cubicles, no privacy, stifling on bad recirculated air, crackberries as the norm for communication, flourescent lighing, lots of extraneous noise and a lock on all the office supplies.
Few people in corporate environments nowadays even have one scintilla of common sense nor practice random acts of logical thinking. I used to think that Information Security folks where the last great hope, but my faith is quickly waning. Even they have went to the dark side by insisting on clean desk policies. The next thing you know, they will be checking to see if our #2 pencils are sharpened.
A clean desk means that there is a strong inducement to reduce the latency of any document on your desk. Don't think deeply about any particular problem, simply heist your leg, add your smell and move it along. Anyway, in conversations with other enterprise architects, I can find tomes of processes but have yet to find a single architect who can articulate what values they collectively hold themselves to. I wonder if anyone cares to truly make enterprise architecture better or simply are blogging to promote the modern version of snake oil...
| | View blog reactionsThe Agile Manifesto for software development has been embraced by the masses of tired developers who simply want to develop high-quality valuable working software for their business customers and have grown increasingly disgusted with the chock-a-block so-called best practices vomited by process weenies who have been successful in making IT mediocre and on the path of no return.
If you aren't familiar with the Cluetrain Manifesto, you would come to understand that hyperlinks subvert hierarchy yet EA in most shops neither provides the value it originally sold nor even enables the strategic intent of the business. Nowadays, it seems as if EA serves itself.
Have you seen what the vast majority of enterprise architects in the blogosphere are discussing? Maybe we need to focus on the basics, you know the way we live, work and interact, otherwise known as the human condition. Can we really be successful where we have open cubicles, no privacy, stifling on bad recirculated air, crackberries as the norm for communication, flourescent lighing, lots of extraneous noise and a lock on all the office supplies.
Few people in corporate environments nowadays even have one scintilla of common sense nor practice random acts of logical thinking. I used to think that Information Security folks where the last great hope, but my faith is quickly waning. Even they have went to the dark side by insisting on clean desk policies. The next thing you know, they will be checking to see if our #2 pencils are sharpened.
A clean desk means that there is a strong inducement to reduce the latency of any document on your desk. Don't think deeply about any particular problem, simply heist your leg, add your smell and move it along. Anyway, in conversations with other enterprise architects, I can find tomes of processes but have yet to find a single architect who can articulate what values they collectively hold themselves to. I wonder if anyone cares to truly make enterprise architecture better or simply are blogging to promote the modern version of snake oil...
