science

Enterprise Architecture as Science?

by

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.

    From information architecture to evidence-based practice

    by

    @bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”

    Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.

    • a simple infrastructure that supports evidence-based practice
    • teachers should be empowered to participate in research
    • the results of research should be disseminated more efficiently
    • resources on research should be available to teachers, enabling them to be critical and thoughtful consumers of evidence
    • barriers between teachers and researchers should be removed
    • teachers should be driving the research agenda, by identifying questions that need to be answered.

    Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.

    to be continued …

    Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)

    From information architecture to evidence-based practice

    by

    @bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems, such as Singapore, “it is almost impossible to rise up the career ladder of teaching, without also doing some work on research in education.”

    Here are some of his key recommendations. Clearly these recommendations would be relevant to many other corporate environments, especially those where there is strong demand for innovation, performance and value-for-money.

    • a simple infrastructure that supports evidence-based practice
    • teachers should be empowered to participate in research
    • the results of research should be disseminated more efficiently
    • resources on research should be available to teachers, enabling them to be critical and thoughtful consumers of evidence
    • barriers between teachers and researchers should be removed
    • teachers should be driving the research agenda, by identifying questions that need to be answered.

    Clearly it is not enough merely to create an information architecture or knowledge infrastructure. The challenge is to make sure they are aligned with an inquiring culture.

    to be continued …

    Ben Goldacre, Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like? (Bad Science, March 2013)

    Arguing with Mendeleev

    by

    @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

    Embracing Ignorance and Failure to Innovate

    by

    What drives scientists to venture unflinchingly into the unknown without any guarantee of discovering the next big breakthrough that will generate headlines? Ignorance, according to Stuart Firestein, author of a compelling book, Ignorance: How It Drives Science. Firestein reveals that “ignorance propels scientific discovery” and asks the provocative question: “What if we cultivated ignorance instead of fearing it?” Even more stunning is that he says the most predictable thing about predictions is how often they […]

    Demystifying Business Innovation

    by

    Guest post by John Sviokla Why innovate? Because the growth of your business ― and, ultimately, its success and sustainability ― demands it. In the past two decades over a billion new customers have entered the market economy, mostly in the parts of the world we now refer to as “emerging markets”. In the eyes of today’s CEO ― regardless of his or her home market ― that’s where the action is: it’s among the […]

    If you liked this, you might also like:

    1. Business Innovation or IT Innovation?
    2. Medical Technology Innovation
    3. CIO Guide to Technology Innovation