First Item
This is the first item in your weblog. Feel free to delete it. ^ TOPEA is an emerging paradigm and distinct profession
EA is an emerging paradigm rather than the continuous struggle of complication business transformation effort or a large scale system architecture. Enterprise Architecture was initiated to align technology with business need. It is the relation between business and technology; it is not all about business nor all about technology. EA is an effort to enable the agility and simplicity in taking advantage of technology evolution. It addresses the issue of limited success of business transformation which has being too complicate and requires significant time. Although the term of "Enterprise Architecture" can be very miss leading, there is no doubt that EA is an emerging paradigm and distinct profession.For many years the industry has applied system architecture and engineering principle to improve and transform business. The ideal is to run the business as a large system rather than gathering of convenience. For example: Business Process Reengineering, Enterprise Engineering, Industry engineering, TQM and many other effort. Business transformation which address the industry anxiety to win the competitive edge has become new buzz word in the 1990’s . However, the limit success of many business transformation effort has the industry to give it a second thought.
The confusion of ”what is EA ?” does not only because of the term of “ Enterprise Architecture” but also due to the struggle of the business transformation professionals. Fail to recognize EA as an effort to address limit success of business transformation and large scale system architecture, the business transformation profession and system architects has find a new vehicle to continue their struggle by considering EA as an implementation of business transformation and large scale system architecture. When the Clinger-Cohen Act in 1996 requires Enterprise Architecture from the federal agencies, The business transformation professional and system engineering professionals, waste no time to catch the bus of EA. Interpreting EA straight from the word of "Enterprise Architecture" and ignore the origin of EA, the system architecture profession consider EA as a large scale system architecture; the business transformation professional consider EA as their second generation. By doing so, they have expose EA under the risk to the same fade of “Come and Go”.
The only way for business transformation to success is to think outside the box of the old paradigm and respect EA from its origin . Enterprise Architecture is the effort to align technology with business. It is the relation between business and technology rather than a large scale system architecture. EA is an emerging paradigm for to see the enterprise big picture and enable the agility and simplicity for the enterprise to take advantage of technology evolution. EA is for total participation to become the culture of information age similar to city planning and civil engineering.
The difference between Enterprise Architecture and designing a large air craft is that the large aircraft must be designed and build to be functional. It requires many years effort. An enterprsie is an continuous operation which can not be put on hold to wait for the dream of enterprise architecture. It is much more like city planning, where a city plan is in place to set the direction and continue to evolve by differne city segment based on business performance need.
Instead of consider "Enterprise Architecture" as an purpose which can be accomplised with existing discipline such as business strategic planning, system engineering and business transforamtion effort with the result of minimum success and the fade of "Come and Go". It is critical to recognize the EA is an emerging paradigm with distict speciality for EA to become the information age culture.
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The Profession of Enterprise Architect
There are many efforts in defining the profession of Enterprise Architect. Carolyn Strano[] in particular has descrbed the EA professional from the aspect of the role , the qualification, the licensing , the social impact, the complexity, the public image, the professal organizaiton. The key is to recognize EA as an emerging discipline and dictint profession with specailty instead of a redudant effort of the other established paradigm.One of the obstacles that must be overcome in order to succeed in enterprise architecture planning is inexperience and lack of training of professional that are expected to perform the work [Spewak, 1992].
The qualification of an EA professional must be reasonable with distinct specialty so the EA architects can be academically trained to satisfy the demand of growing EA industry. The concern is that the qualification of Enterprise Architects has not being clear and the current expectation on the qualification of Enterprise Architects overarch on every discipline from IT to business transformation.
Multiple disciplines also means “lack of specialty “; there is a human limitation of capability within each individual. Speaking for myself, average human capability is a constant volume where the depth of specialty decreases with the width of the diversity of multiple disciplines. Over expectation on the EA professional qualification, which make EA profound, can also contribute to the inability to train the new blood of EA professional for EA to mature and prosperity.
So I suggest that EA is an IT discipline to align technology to business and resolve the challenge of stovepipe and islands of automation. EA is an emerging paradigm and it is not a redundant effort from the paradigm of application development and business transformation. Enterprise architect serve as the facilitator with the skill of leadership, management, a sense of urgency, and an understanding of psychology [strano]. The EA professional discipline includes:
The training to comprehend the big picture. The enterprise is large, each person touched only one part, the enterprise architect must put all parts together with the collaboration of all the stakeholder to find out what the enterprise really like. To see the big picture enable the business owners make better decision.
The IT training on integrated EA tools to provide the EA infrastructure. Enterprise architect’s responsibility is to resolve the challenge of IT stovepipe systems and islands of automation. The EA architects must demonstrate their capability to resolve the challenge of stovepipe systems and island of information within EA to lead the integration and interoperability for the enterprise.
The IT training on the engineering of reuse and sharing. EA professionals are distinct from other professional. The EA professional are trained in the engineering of reuse and sharing between many different business owners rather than the traditional system engineering which design the optimize solution. The engineering of reuse and sharing is the consolidation and reuse of common resources via standards and pattern base enterprise workload distribution.
The training on EA communication with model, framework, architecture drawing and presentations. Although many people are skilled in the design process, there are few who can translate the values, qualities and objectives into a drawing or model.
The training to facilitate stakeholder collaboration and building consensus. The enterprise architect must be able to facilitate the design of governance and compliance process to secure buy-in from the stakeholders. It the major EA challenge in the people oriented enterprise community. Governance and compliance processes are similar to political process to secure buy-in from the stakeholders. The enterprise architect, similar to urban designer or architect needs to be aware of the political, social and economic forces impacting on the situation and engage in the debate so that he or she can lead a team and produce as many design outcomes as necessary to achieve consensus (McClynn 1994).
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