Bruce Robertson

Lately, news in my feed reader (Google), people/entities I follow on Twitter (Twitterfon), and even good old paper newspapers (NY Times, Washington Post) seem to be doing more with trends.  You can get trends on Twitter search terms (http://www.twitscoop.com/), trends on searches on Google (http://www.google.com/trends), even trends on American Idol futures.  Gartner’s own web site shows trends too, for example the Gartner EA peer search trends (cloud computing is large in our search cloud as I write this).  (Disclaimer: you do have to be a Gartner seat holder to see this peer search trends info.)

It is worth noting that some of these are single moment trends (a snapshot in time of many search terms = what’s hot now) while others are trends across time (of fewer search terms, then).  Both views are interesting.

But searching for trends in EA terms can be misleading.  I just tried Google trends on the FEA reference model acronyms (PRM, BRM, SRM, DRM, TRM) and of course some of these acronyms are NOT just for FEA (most notably DRM, which also means digital rights management).  That doesn’t help.

How can one track EA trends, then?  On Google, the trend for searches on the term EA has remained pretty constant over the years — constantly declining, which itself is interesting.  As an ongoing discipline, it has passed the hype phase (try trending EA against cloud computing, for example).  We’re in the plateau of productivity, using Gartner Hype Cycle terms.  But, consistency does say something, even if declining — it’s not spikey.  It’s not new.  Perhaps this should just make all of us EA people feel old?

In some sense, this constant nature of EA searching may tell us something.  It may imply some sense of maturity.  Indeed, many now seem to understand what EA is, at least to some extent.  There is confusion of course — about scope, models, value and many other things — but the term is not going away and the discipline isn’t either.  Granted, the people may change, but even in these tough economic times we haven’t seen a huge push to just stop EA work altogether.  Maybe this constant level is enough for now.

Still, it should worry us that it seems to be declining.  Maybe this is just that searches are declining, but other metrics (like attendance at EA conferences, etc.) are up.  The more mature, the less searching?  Only newbies search?  Hmm.  Not sure this really means much.

How about I leave the “trend for trends” topic by suggesting instead that EA practitioners look at trends, specifically trends in EA value delivery.  Many will push hard for metrics to describe most importantly how EA provides a valueable service to the business.  But, let’s not forget to show trends in those KPIs — how a given KPI’s measurement has changed over time.  Metrics are often best used for not just the snapshot in time, but the longer term over many years trends.  We want to show that EA is increasingly delivering a valuable service to the enterprise, even if the search term shows a consistent decline.  We’d like our value trends to go up!  So, if you have good stories for using such KPIs over time, do tell.

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On a side note: to see who at Gartner is blogging on “enterprise architecture,” try this google search: enterprise architecture site:blogs.gartner.com