I'm going to be spending a fair bit of my time over the next while developing curriculum around how Web 2.0 technologies have become a required tool for enterprise architecture (EA). There are a number of influences to this newly formed realization;
- Agile (and nimble) approaches are becoming a must have for enterprise architecture.
- Documentation heavy approaches overly ritualize a process that can be duplicated and greatly improved by using wikis.
- The deep dive technical discussions that influence and describe architecture are better captured on video and with photos of the whiteboard.
- The best place for architecture should be embedded in the development culture. It cannot be mandated.
- Good enterprise architects are really hard to find. And most are attracted to emerging approaches and technologies. (there architects for god's sake)
- With all the belt tightening going on, architects need to be able to do more with less. [so get rid of the costly (and useless) rituals]
My first steps are to start gathering reference material toward this work. You can see some of that here already... One item that has come to mind is to define what is the enterprise and what is enterprise architecture.
- a company, business, organization, or other purposeful endeavor; an undertaking or project, especially a daring and courageous one; a willingness to undertake new or risky projects; energy and initiative; an active participation in projects
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enterprise - A system of business endeavor within a particular business environment. An enterprise architecture (EA) is a design for the arrangement and interoperation of business components (eg, policies, operations, infrastructure, information) that together make up the enterprise's means of operation. [ICH].
www.balancedscorecard.org
