More thoughts on EA

This is pretty good - http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/12/ba-model-ea

I agree

• "EA for the sake of doing EA ...flounders aimlessly in search of respect....IT needs to start thinking more like the business and less like engineers"
• "EA practitioners should be focused far more on enabling a deeper understanding of the purpose and capabilities of the enterprises they work in – to facilitate greater clarity of reasoning about strategic options and appropriate action – rather than taking on an often obstructive and disconnected IT strategy and governance role" ...
• "... capability map as a portfolio of business components ...the next level of details need only to be captured as new programs require them."
• " ...traditional views of EA (People, Process and Technology) are too simplistic to support the diversity of business models. [Need] ...business architecture assets targeted at different levels of abstraction and produced in a contextually appropriate way to facilitate a far greater federation in decision making and implementation.]
• "... you can no longer afford to ignore the ecosystem in which the enterprise operates"

I disagree that:

• it is "... impossible to keep a centralized view of how the enterprise works -at a cost that would justify the value of such a view. ...". However maintaining a view requires changes to methods and tooling so that view accretes as a natural by-product of other activities and does not require capture for its own sake (Cf. cadastral data capture).