Framework

Enterprise Architecture as Science?

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It is common to describe Enterprise Architecture as a science. Here are a few examples.

  • We see enterprise architecture (EA) as a scientific sub-discipline both of computer science and business management. The twice mentioned word “science” here emphasizes our certainty that EA is an exact discipline able to produce precise approaches and solutions. Wolf Rivkin, Enterprise Architecture and the Elegant Enterprise (Architecture and Governance 5-3)

A few years ago, I discussed this question with @RSessions

Roger is one of the few people I know who is seriously committed to empirical investigation of EA. I believe he shares my view that much EA falls woefully short of anything like scientific method. To my eye, many knowledge-claims within the EA world look more like religion or mediaeval scholastic philosophy than empirically verifiable science.

But why does it matter anyway? Why would people be so keen to claim EA as a science? Here is what Foucault had to say to those who wished to claim Marxism (or psychoanalysis) as a science.

“When I see you trying to prove that Marxism is a science, to tell the truth, I do not really see you trying to demonstrate once and for all that Marxism has a rational structure and that its propositions are therefore the products of verification procedures. I see you, first and foremost, doing something different. I see you connecting the Marxist discourse, and I see you assigning to those who speak that discourse the power-effects that the West has, ever since the Middle Ages, ascribed to a science and reserved for those who speak a scientific discourse.” Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 (English translation by David Macey, 2003)

In other words, claiming EA as a science is not about the rational basis for its knowledge-claims but about its authority, or what Foucault (in David Macey’s translation) calls Power-Effects. Thus instead of claiming EA as a science, one might follow Gartner in claiming EA as a discipline.


Enterprise architecture (EA) is a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions. EA is used to steer decision making toward the evolution of the future state architecture. (Gartner website, retrieved 17 August 2013)

Foucault characterizes a discipline in terms of the selection, normalization, hierarchicalization and centralization of knowledge. We can surely recognize these processes in the formation and maintenance of EA frameworks such as TOGAF and PEAF, as well as various attempts to construct Bodies of Knowledge. Foucault notes that “the progress of reason” necessitates “the disciplinarization of polymorphous and heterogeneous knowledge”. This might lead us to expect some institutional resistance to heterodox ideas, as well as the marginalization of “amateur scholars”.

Foucault is interested in ways that people and organizations can respond to disruptive forces large and small, from “great radical ruptures, massive binary divisions” to “mobile and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings”.

Just as the network of power relations ends by forming a dense web that passes through apparatuses and institutions, without being exactly localized in them, so too the swarm of points of resistance traverses social stratifications and individual unities. And it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible. [Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol 1.]

Gartner’s notion of EA-as-discipline seems quite consistent with this. It is focused on mobilizing the response to disruptive forces (for which Gartner uses the rather strange word “nexus”). EA gains its power from a kind of strategic codification (or discursive practice), allowing the enterprise to “harness the nexus”, thereby “revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders”. (Gartner website, retrieved 17 August 2013)

Update

@tetradian commented on the dangers of spurious ‘authority’ – ‘spurious’ in sense of claiming an aura of ‘authority’ when there’s none to be had (b/c it isn’t ‘science’ anyway)

I agree that claims of scientific status or method in the EA world are generally spurious. But there are other ways of asserting authority. For me, the key question is why (and on what grounds) should anyone trust the pronouncements of EA. It is not just about danger versus safety, but about authority versus authenticity.

    Danish metamodels

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    My Danish friends @gotze and @aojensen comment on the latest release of OIO EA, which is a national enterprise architecture framework and meta-model published by the Danish Government Agency for Digitization.

    Both John and Anders feel that certain key artefacts have been placed at the wrong layer of abstraction. John writes

    “In my view, Business Rules should not be located at the strategic level at all. I would argue that Business Rules primarily “belongs” to the Business sub-architecture domain.”

    What is the basis for this argument? Anders points out a consequence

    “business rules are located in the government strategy layer and thus tightly coupled to the long term vision of the government agency”

    “Business rules are operationalisations of the long term strategy and strategic intent.
    Whilst the vision, mission, and purpose of the enterprise do not change very often (i.e. provide the best available services our citizens), the business rules and processes involved in realising this will definitely change.”

    and therefore

    “Business rules belong in the business architecture.”

    Thus Anders is basing his argument on a statement about the frequency of certain classes of change.

    This statement appears to be empirically testable, although I know from my own experience that it is a lot difficult than one might think to gather data to test this kind of statement.

    Part of the problem of measuring rates of change is that we don’t have a particularly robust theory of change in the first place. Let’s look at an example. From time to time, perhaps every year, Steve Ballmer restates the vision of Microsoft. Obviously he doesn’t use exactly the same words every year. And of course Microsoft-watchers will seek to interpret even the slightest change of wording or emphasis as a sign of a strategic change in direction. So even if Ballmer himself insists that the vision hasn’t changed, we might not believe him. Looking back in time, we might find that major changes in direction had already been hinted at in previous years. So at what point does an apparently minor change in wording become a substantially new vision?

    Conversely, when a company has been exposed as unethical, the CEO will go public with an apology and an assertion of a new ethical vision. (Recent example: Barclays Bank.) We might not believe him either.

    In both cases, we will probably judge whether there is a new vision or not by observing whether the company behaviour and rules changes or not. (And this is not just external observers – Microsoft and Barclays employees and managers are also making these judgements.) So the rate of change of vision might be epistemologically indistinguishable from the rate of change of behaviour.

    However, despite the difficulties in conceptualizing and measuring change, I think it does make sense to derive architectural layers from the idea that certain things have a characteristic rate of change, and that things with a different rate of change should be in different layers. This means that there is at least a possibility of subjecting an architecture to empirical evaluation. I have published this idea in articles for the CBDI Forum, and suggested that architectural theory needs to be based on the Pace Layering principle

    In contrast, Anders’ appeal to the IAF seems to be purely an argument from authority. The IAF establishes some “fundamental” categories, and so any framework that deviates from these categories must be wrong. I think this line of argumentation is weaker. Even though you may assert some attractive consequences of following IAF, I cannot see any reason for believing that these consequences follow only from IAF and not from any rival framework.

    Frameworks and categories may be embedded in metamodels. But how do we know what is the basis for choosing between alternative metamodels?

    John Gøtze, Metamodels (January 2013)
    Anders Ø. Jensen, Enterprise Architecture and abstraction layers (February 2013)

    Ethics, Barclays and totalitarianism (Catholic Commentary January 2013)
    Barclays boss tells staff ‘sign up to ethics or leave’ (BBC News January 2013)
    Did Barclays suffer an Ethics Meltdown? (CSR Zone, July 2012)
    Sure Kamhunga, Barclays to re-examine its core values(October 2012)
    Naven Johal, Barclay’s Does Something Right! (January 2013)

    Updated 29 April 2013

    Arguing with Mendeleev

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    @JohnZachman insists that his classification scheme is fixed—it is not negotiable. Comparing his Zachman Framework with the periodic table originally developed by Dmitri Mendeleev, he says, “You can’t argue with Mendeleev that he forgot a column in the periodic table”.

    Well, actually, you can. If you look at the Wikipedia article on the Periodic Table, you can see the difference between Mendeleev’s original version and the modern version. Modern chemists now use a periodic table with 18 columns. As Wikipedia states, “Mendeleev’s periodic table has since been expanded and refined with the discovery or synthesis of further new elements and the development of new theoretical models to explain chemical behavior.”

    What makes chemistry a science is precisely the fact that the periodic table is open to this kind of revision in the light of experimental discovery and improved theory. If the same isn’t true for the Zachman Framework, then it can hardly claim to be a proper science.

    Some observers have noted that early versions of the Zachman Framework had fewer columns, and see this as a sign that the number of columns may be variable and open to discovery. But the Zachmanites reject this; they say that the six columns have always existed, it was just that the early presentations didn’t mention them all. “Humanity for the last 7,000 years has been able to work with what, how, who, where, when, and why.” (This sounds like a Just-So-Story – “How the Enterprise Architect Got His Toolset”)

    Mr Zachman has a degree in chemistry, so he ought to understand what makes the Periodic table different from his own framework. However, some of his followers are less cautious in their claims. I found an article by one Sunil Dutt Jha, whose “proof” of the scientific nature of EA seemed to rely on two key facts (1) that Mendeleev transformed alchemy into chemistry by creating the periodic table, and (2) that the Zachman framework looks a bit like the periodic table, therefore (3) EA must be a science too.

    An earlier version of this comment was posted on Linked-In Is it true to say that “Enterprise Architecture” is a scientific basis for creating, maintaining and running an Enterprise?

    Erecting the Framework (Feb 2004) – John Zachman discussing his Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture in an interview with Dan Ruby

    John P. Zachman, The Zachman Framework Evolution (2009-2011)

    Sunil Dutt Jha, Biggest myth – “Enterprise Architecture is a discipline aimed at creating models” (January 2013)

    See also 

    Richard Veryard, Satiable curtiosity (September 2009)

    Alan Wall, Pattern Recognition and the Periodic Table (March 2013)


    Link added 24 March 2013

    The Architecture Crystal Ball: Predictions for 2012

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    I have had the opportunity to read several documents containing estimations on what the chief architects and CIOs should expect of the concept of Enterprise Architecture in 2012. As a result I have made some thoughts of my own, and my thoughts have been delimited to what could happen in Scandinavia. There are reasons for […]

    Developing Frameworks: Five Things To Do and Five Things To Avoid.

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    The Essentials While working with the concept of Enterprise Architecture it usually becomes a necessity to chose and implement a framework. As such the chief architect can either implement a standard framework, and as such commence the project of documenting … Continue reading →