Chief Architect

I have posted a link to Serge Thorn's excellent enterprise architecture discussion group in the Enterprise Architecture Resources.  The following toics are a snapshot of the type of content typically discussed:

• EA and MBA
• Training opportunities in India
• Building an EA Practice from scratch
• Where should the Enterprise Architect's focus?
• Government Interoperability Framework (GIF) and National Enterprise Architecture (NEA)
• Location of the architect in the organization
• The Big Eleplant of Enterprise Architecture 

There is also a good list of enterprise architecture blogs on the site which are well worth browsing.

Joe McKendrick asked why Europe seems to be ahead of North America in EA. John Michelsen asks is Europe ahead in SOA. Ronald Schmelzer thinks that the USA is not behind but its not ahead either.

From my European perspective, this is an odd debate. I have the impression that a lot more money has gone in to enterprise architecture over the last 10 years in the USA particularly from government. Obviously, this has not been the case across the board but the struggling American architecture manager has not had a very high profile.

If you have millions of dollars and years to deliver then what pressure is there to be pragmatic? This has meant that the dominant approaches to Enterprise Architecture are Big Architecture Up Front approaches. Where architecture has had less acceptance and less money, we have had to evolve alternative ways of achieving our goals. We have had to develop creative approaches to making our money go further.

If I am right then, what we may be seeing in action is natural selection. Perhaps the reason that we can move ahead more quickly with SOA is that we are more focused on delivering benefits, we have had to be more pragmatic, and we have had to work out how to move incrementally down a strategic path. Because we have been under greater environmental stress, we have evolved enhanced capabilities to manage architecture effectively, to demonstrate its direct business benefits and now our SOA initiatives are reaping the benefits.

I agree with Andy Blumenthal in his blog IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture that EA governance (and all forms of IT governance) should be integrated into a unified structure that ultimately reports into an overall business controlled IT board that controls all “think”, “build” and “run” investment.

There is a key point is that all communication from the EA board must be in business terms i.e. relevant, easy to understand and accessible - "user centric"  to use Andy's definition. The EA board will lose credibility if it is seen as a technical control body or worse a talking shop. It must be seen as a vital business control function that ensures IT supports the business mission, vision, strategy, and goals.

In the minds of many business people, data management, interoperability, technology standardization, security, and other issues that architects look at are arcane and possibly irrelevant distractions that IT should look after under the covers. In presenting EA issues and recommendations to the IT board, we need to bring these items to life by using business language and explain how we are supporting business goals.