By Larry Danberger September 11, 2018
The death of Enterprise Architecture is grossly exaggerated. Some would have us believe that it is no longer needed, where on-the-fly approaches are inaccurately disguised as ‘Agile’ thinking and claimed to produce superior results compared to sound enterprise planning. No. Business process management, data management, application portfolio management and to a lesser extent technology still have a long way to go before graduating from the Science approach to the Commodity approach. Short term thinkers that want results quickly focus on low hanging fruit. They won’t be around for the long haul so have no regard for the damage they cause by ignoring the care, maintenance, and ongoing skills growth and craftsmanship perfection that comes from the more difficult path of maintaining and enhancing the orchard.
The necessary path of planning for the future includes a careful understanding of the business products (why does the business exist), what needs to be done to deliver the products, how are these steps done (the processes), what data is involved, what systems will provide the needed functionality, and what technology will be used to deliver the systems. This is fundamental EA: Business, Data, Applications, Technology. Without this effective management we get chaos, churn, frustrated staff, expensive processes, slow response to customers and industry changes, and failures in communication.
