Thoughts on Enterprise Architecture Frameworks

In a previous blogs I explained how much I appreciate Gartner best practices in enterprise architecture.  Among the practices I liked are the business outcome driven EA practice that Gartner calls for. It makes sense to me that targeting one or two business outcomes at a time not only speeds up value realization but sustain the enterprise architecture program.

Saying so, I know Gartner’s framework will never be the framework of choice to any organization stepping into an enterprise architecture practice unless of course it hired Gartner consultancy services. This weekly course discussion assignment confirmed this to me.

With Gartner framework, you have a bunch of well thought practices but you are totally clueless on how your architecture is supposed to look like, and how its components relate to each other.

Nevertheless, not only Gartner Framework has problems, the open group’s TOGAF framework has its limitations as well. While the Architecture development method of TOGAF provides a step by step process to build an Architecture, business people are not attracted to it due to its inflexibility and its IT oriented approach.

It is pretty clear, that many organizations find themselves in situations were no standard Enterprise Architecture framework can fit their needs. These needs might not only be pertaining to architectural elements but some of it might be related to organizational culture or business priorities. These organizations usually go for the “best of the breed” hybrid framework that is picked and pulled from different frameworks to be relevant to their enterprise’s context and constraints.

I personally still have a crush on Gartner best practices. These practices will definitely find its way to my next enterprise architecture work assignment.