“There’s no point being right if you can’t take everyone with you”. I heard this on the radio today from one of the contestants of The Apprentice last year. The contestant had failed to win the competition and on a number of occassions had been right but completely failed to bring the rest of the team around to her point of view. That is in essence what the one-page view of Enterprise Architecture is all about – taking people with you.
Another quick point about the one page views of an Enterprise Architecture I’ve been describing is that they are not an Enterprise Architecture! They are a view on some of the pieces (quite important ones) integrated together to explain why the architecture is important and where to focus effort. You can only really construct them if you also have a really good understanding of the business, information, solutions, infrastructure and technical architectures, the relationships between them and the drivers for the business.
You would use them as ONE of the ways to influence stakeholders and senior managers. There are other influencing mechanisms and it’s better to understand them and have a plan for influence than just keep walking blindly. Scott Adams on his Dilbert blog has a good posting on influence – but I can’t guarantee that Enterprise Architecture will enhance your sex life (read the post to understand).
