I will be your CRMist and he will be your ERPist

People just don't seem to understand that enterprise architecture is about enterprises i.e. all the people with critical knowledge about how the enterprise operates sharing knowledge and using that knowledge to make decisions.

No one would stand up and say "I will be your CRMist" i.e. I will be the person who does CRM for your enterprise. Similiarly no one would stand up and say "I will be your ERP-ist" i.e. I will be the person who does ERP for your enterprise. Why - because it doesn't make sense.

What they could mean is that I will help establish a centre expertise for CRM (or ERP) within the organisations until the practice is so well bedded in, and a CoE is no longer required. Or I will champion the implementation of CRM or ERP systems - and the associated organisational change needed as we move from our manual systems.

Why then do people stand up and say "I will be your Enterprise Architect" - and expect to be taken seriously. If they quickly qualified this by saying they wanted to champion EA, or develop a CoE for EA - perhaps we could take it more seriously. What they could mean is that they will help establish a centre of expertise for EA within the organisations until the practice is so well bedded in, and a CoE is no longer required. Or I will champion the implementation of EA systems - and the associated organisational change needed as we move from our manual systems.

In fact the whole practice of EA i.e. the term itself has been undermined by the use of the term is in this "I will be EA" - it clearly isn't about collaboration, sharing knowledge and making decisions - because if it was the sentence wouldn't make sense. So EA must be something else - maybe it means Expensive Artist - I will produce pretty pictures of things using Visio.