Philip AllegaI received couple of emails, and a few tweets, over the weekend concerning the placement of everything-that-has-anything-to-do-with-enterprise-architecture on Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture, 2010. Many were concerned that EA was in the trough. A keen eye will note that EA has just begun to move OUT of the trough and is not firmly stuck in the bottom of the trough.
GOOD NEWS! EA is coming OUT of the Trough of Disillusionment.
A recent press release quoted me as saying:
“Overall, EA slipped into the Trough of Disillusionment, along with EA tools, because EA practitioners couldn’t or wouldn’t push EA efforts to become integrated with the business, drawing an invisible wall between the business and IT,” said Mr. Allega.
True, this is what drove EA INTO the trough; but, let me clear up why we see the early days of EA coming OUT of the trough.
First off, a keen observer of the hype cycle graphic (see http://www.gartner.com/hc/images/201646_0001.gif) will note that “EA Tools” are at the bottom of the trough, followed by a slowly-moving “Whole-of-Government Enterprise Architecture” just past the bottom of the trough. It may not be obvious, at first glance, but EA is already on the move upwards.
Gartner analysts have highlighted two main reasons why they don’t EA is already on the move out of the Trough of Disillusionment:
- An increasing number of organizations are seeking to support a more business-vision-focused EA effort.
- Several emerging and evolving practices and disciplines are likely to aid in the continued maturity and evolution of EA toward the Plateau of Productivity.
A couple of examples may help:
- A large, global, IT company is using EA to integrate multiple business operating models. EA, in this case, is used to support the transition to a unified operating model of the business, given the strategic direction that the leadership team believes will help the organization compete properly, serve customers accordingly, and make a profit for the stakeholders in the business.
- A large American insurance company is using EA to maximize opportunities to present customers with additional solutions that entice them to share a large proportion of their spend with this large American insurance company. EA is being used, focusing on business capability modeling, to roadmap and guide the transformation of this company’s people, procecesses and IT that enables the company goals.
This isn’t true of all EA efforts, but it illustrates that there are EA programs that are taking advantgage of the quickly moving profiles we highlighted coming up towards the peak of inflated expectations. The adoption of these quickly moving (meaning that its 2 to 5 years until they reach the plateau of productivity) entries that we profiled on the hype cycle are, indeed, good news that is helping EA pull itself out of the trough (see the profiles for “middle-out approach”, “enterprise information architecture”, “enterprise solution architecture”, “business capability modeling” and “EA Assurance”.
A personal observation about the positioning of EA tools I’d like to highlight from my blog last Friday (see http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/08/06/exploring-hype-in-the-world-of-enterprise-architecture/): there’s an opportunity with these EA vendors to get past the challenging hype of EA framework advocates and get to solutions.
Mike Walker’s blog today (see http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2010/08/gartner-2010-hype-cycle-for-enterprise-architecture.html) echoes the opportunity at the feet of EA vendors to help EA programs get much more pragmatic:
Frameworks are not as mature as they could be. This capability for EA is estimated by Gartner to be 10+ years out until productivity is realized. As you have heard from me in past posts and articles, I believe there is a level of pragmatism that is lost on the EA Tool providers. If they nail that, they will shorten that time to productivity significantly.
For EA practitioners, there’s a lot of reasons and examples that illustrate we’re coming out of disillusionment and getting ready for that plateau of productivity as EA continues to mature. Now, it’s time to get back to work on improving EA maturity.
Category: Enterprise Architecture Hype Cycle Tags:
8 responses so far ↓
1 niraj August 9, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Is there going to be a research published for – A large American insurance company case.
I would be very interested.
2 Philip Allega August 9, 2010 at 4:06 pm
I don’t have permission to name names on this page, so I had to use the cover such a “large American insurance company”. I spent time with this organization last year at the beginning of this effort and have also spoken with the tool vendor this company is using to support this effort. We are asking for permission to name them directly and, indeed, the opportunity to develop a case study concerning this use of EA for this purpose. As you might imagine, when companies feel that they are doing something unique and that gives them a competitive advantage they are not as keen to share until such endeavors become more commonplace. At such times, they like to tout that they have always been leaders. I, and my colleagues, are hopeful that they will agree to case study development so that we can get deeper into the story behind their use of EA in this manner.
3 Tweets that mention Good News! EA Coming out of Trough of Disillusionment -- Topsy.com August 9, 2010 at 4:54 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Editor, Philip Allega. Philip Allega said: Blog: EA coming OUT of trough of disillusionment http://tinyurl.com/34qjkms #entarch #enterprisearchitecture #GartnerEA [...]
4 Mike Walker August 9, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Hi Philip,
Thanks for sharing this additional detail. It would be great to see the details from your large customer. Particularly the lessons learned from a culture, business and adoption perspective. It would be good to see how the business units adapt to EA’s new role in the coming years.
From my perspective of an EA practitioner, my efforts in creating The Office of Enterprise Architecture for my company involves booting up our Business Architecture services first before major technology driven initiatives. Obviously, we have to be pragmatic and it can’t be just top down but rather the “Middle Out Approach”. We will select the key capability areas and focus deep and top down on those rather than going broad out of the gate.
Another note, I hired my business architect before our solution and domain architects.
So far we have had amazing support of our efforts and are starting to become a true trusted partner of the enterprise all up.
Best Regards,
Mike Walker
Chief Architect | Intellectual Ventures
http://www.MikeTheArchitect.com
5 Philip Allega August 9, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Thanks, Mike, for your perspective. For most folks applying EA to what we’ve called the 1st generation of EA, namely against the IT viewpoint only, they’ve always told us that they’d love to focus on the business first. Unfortunately, many focus on the technical aspect without any business context let alone any business architecture. Our analysis and resulting recommendations would concur with your advice to “…select the key capability areas and focus deep and top down on those rather than going broad out of the gate.” Yet, with many, those capabilities selected may be scoped and focused to a rather fine point that, due to culture and politics, forces them to remain ensonced within the “four walls” of the IT organization and not extended to the real business of iT.
I’m glad to hear of your success in becoming “…a true trusted partner of the enterprise all up” as this is what we, too, see of those leaders who are making a difference in applying this discipline correctly.
6 Is EA really BVR (Business Value Realization)? August 10, 2010 at 2:29 pm
[...] Philip Allega is a research vice president responsible for teaching, coaching and critiquing Gartner's clients to help them realize the value of enterprise architecture as a strategic discipline. Read Full Bio Coverage Areas: ← Good News! EA Coming out of Trough of Disillusionment [...]
7 Hype about the EA Hype Cycle August 11, 2010 at 11:26 am
[...] As a result of immaturity and misapplications of EA, compounded by the market of “my way to do EA is better than your way to do EA”, we still see EA just coming out of the trough of disillusionment (see http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/08/09/good-news-ea-coming-out-of-trough-of-disillusionme…). [...]
8 EA Dying? No! Let’s Get Ready to Rumble! August 17, 2010 at 12:24 pm
[...] Gartner recently shared that the entirety of things known collectively as “enterprise arhitecture” is in the trough of disllusionment (paywall link here: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&id=1402513 and graphic for everyone here: http://www.gartner.com/hc/images/201646_0001.gif). But, we’re already seeing it looking up from the trough as recounted in Good News! EA Coming out of Trough of Disillusionment. [...]