Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
A couple evenings ago the BCS (British Computer Society) held a open question-and-answer session with John Zachman at the EAC-BPM conference in London. How much has the Zachman Framework for enterprise-architecture changed over the past decades – and particularly over the…
How many layers are there in an enterprise-architecture? If we read any of the standard texts, you’ll see there are several popular answers. For example, Archimate says there are three: Business, Application and Technology. TOGAF says there are four: Business, Data,…
In order to reap maximum value from the recognition that an Enterprise Architecture can provide long lasting and continuous business benefit the decision to build and use one must be made. How to do so is where some businesses come … Continue reading →
@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
Architecture, in general, is about models. Hence, enterprise architects are to devise architecture, that is to model the enterprise. If you don’t do that, then you are not doing architecture.
The vertical dimension describes the system development process beginning with the objectives establishment and conceptual design and ending with the Implementation.
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If most of the frameworks we use in enterprise-architecture are ‘smooshed together’ from other frameworks, according to the needs of the context, then how do we do that ‘smooshing together’? More to the point, when and how and why should we…
Architects produce many types of models. One useful distinction is between AS-IS models (which describe the current situation) and TO-BE models (which describe some projected future situation). If we can compare an AS-IS model with a TO-BE model, we ca…
Defeat Darwinian Enterprise Model that is Adaptive, rather strive to achieve Generative Model that is transformative creating rich diversity from minimal sets. Connect – Strategy – Architecture / Operations – Implementation
The real art of enterprise-architecture, and perhaps its hardest challenge, is in presenting the right level of detail. Not too little, not too much, but just enough. Just Enough Detail. To which people will, of course, immediately ask, “Okay, but how much detail is ‘Just Enough Detail’?”. And I’ll have to admit that there isn’t […]
Early this morning, while glancing through the latest tweets on my iphone, I was attracted by last post from Richard Veryard on slideshare: Preamble Good slideshow though, but since I felt that it is going a bit in many different directions, I felt that I had to react on this one, directly on my blog to […]