Philip Allega
Research VP
12 years at Gartner
27 years IT industry
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
by Philip Allega | August 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
Historically, I’ve been a light participant in non-client-related social networking opportunities concerning EA. Recently, I’ve found myself at home, not traveling, and sharing the results of Gartner’s EA Hype Cycle, 2010, with the general public and Gartner clients who are using various social networking sites to share perspectives and hold social conversations. To be fair, I’d say that my Gartner EA research community colleagues haven’t been the most “social” (with very notable exceptions of Mike Rollings, Nick Gall and Bruce Robertson).
Dipping my toe in the water recently resulted in an unnerving round of “haters”. It happens. Sometimes people disregard, or hate, a Gartner analyst without listening to what they may have to say for a variety of reasons each believe are valid to support their contentions. Personally, disregarding a viewpoint, opinion, perspective, etc. regardless of where it comes from would seriously hamper my ability to do my job. There are so many different positions, definitions, frameworks, approaches, methods, thoughts, ideas, concepts and more about the subject of enterprise architecture (EA) that it would be a disservice to my clients and my personal education if I immediately dismissed, out-of-hand, the entity sharing their view.
An example, not related to EA at all, occurred the other day. I was reading an article about sovereign citizens, a group of people who believe that they are above US law, and the logic that underpin their belief systems. I did my research into their arguments and positions. Ultimately, I mentally classified them in a group whose belief systems I do not share; but, I understood how they attempted to logically support their belief systems. Further, I was able to see how their belief systems related to others and, as I went further, how that connects to, and impacts, groups with other belief systems. I was also able to look at the enterprise of belief systems and see the level of support they hold today.
Back to the world of EA.
I received a number of direct messages from people whose opinion I generally find to be of interest who advised me to stand down in social networking circles because I’m not a “real enterprise architect”. I’d like to further explore why this advice is not warranted.
One of my more prolific colleagues is Betsy Burton. She readily admits that she has never been an enterprise architect or involved in EA at any point in her career prior to joining Gartner’s EA research community. Yet, she’s an amazing analyst and, to me, it’s her ability to ask the insightful questions, learn from others, and help classify what works, what doesn’t work, and why it works or doesn’t is just what makes her a great analyst to support EA programs and their stakeholders. In my humble opinion, she could probably do this for any IT-related topic (note: I think she’s on her 6th research area at Gartner in 16 years).
My wife is an addiction therapist. During her Master’s Thesis at London South Bank University she explored the concept of whether former addicts or non-addicts made for the best therapists (typically called counselors in the UK). Her findings were that addicts initially believe that only a former addict can treat them but that non-addict therapists are found, at the end of the day, to be equally effective in treating addicts.
I am not making an explicit comparison between addicts and enterprise architects, but I am making an indirect comparison between beliefs of who can provide value and who cannot provide value to practicing enterprise architects today. This, I believe, is at the heart of the matter.
As I’ve watched the back-and-forth within various social media I have noted that many of the commentators are former enterprise architects that now “carry a bag” (an English idiom that means they have a sales quota to meet) and have their own boutique company to support. There are also currently practicing enterprise architects, meaning that they (most of them that I’ve noticed) work for an IT organization inside a corporation who have sent comments on twitter, Gartner blog comments, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook (and hey, these FB folks count as my “friends” and they’re giving me this advice) and the like.
So, what makes a “real enterprise architect” in this case? I’m not certain, but I had the distinct feeling that it had more to do with the amount of “free” advice concerning EA that was being shared than in whether you “cut your chops” (note: another English idiom meaning that you paid your dues or have demonstrated experience) in EA at some point in your career within a corporation. I also feel that some of the comments were from people worried that “Gartner” would take over the social networking conversation that is underway each day.
At the end of the day I think that there are a lot of opinions to share from pundits and practitioners and observers. I’ll listen to anyone. I’m happy to speak with anybody about EA, even if they have a different opinion. Indeed, it’s that different opinion that’s most helpful in my personal understanding.
Biographical confession: I’ve been in IT for 27 years, having spent my last years inside a “real” IT organization under the tutelage of Susan Cramm and Daniel Roddy doing enterprise architecture work. I spent a week listening to John Zachman in January 1990 that changed my professional life forever (little did I know it at the time) when I discovered that my company at the time would NEVER be able to do EA the way that John described. That sent me off to find Larry DeBoever and his fledgling ideas around EA; and, not too long afterwards, I came across Richard Buchanan (note: Richard is my boss today, so drop him an email and tell him something GOOD about me <I am just kidding, btw>) and his boutique firm’s supporting concepts with EA. 2 years after those two gentleman joined forces at META Group I was hired to provide EA support for the consulting arm at META, tightly linked to the EA analyst team, becoming a full time analyst shortly thereafter. As an aside, because I’m glad to work with him again, a colleague at the time, and a colleague again via Gartner’s acquisition of Burton Group, was Mike Rollings. Since 1998, I have been teaching, coaching and critiquing organizations engaged in maturing their EA programs in North American and across Europe. I have the luxury of having colleagues (note: there are many other long time colleagues on our team from the late 1990s, all former enterprise architects inside IT organizations) throughout the world from whom I continue to learn about how EA works, and fails, globally.
If you want to know more about some of my friends at work, or want to join us, see my blog http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/08/16/do-you-want-to-work-with-me-and-my-friends/.
20 years in EA might not make me a “real enterprise architect”, but I think that I might make an interesting person in the social, and private, discourse concerning EA.
You decide: Are only “real enterprise architects” allowed to comment and, indeed, what is a “real enterprise architect”?
Category: Enterprise Architect Enterprise Architecture Gartner Analyst Tags:
by Philip Allega | August 17, 2010 | 8 Comments
A lot of buzz at the end of last week of the IT vs. Biz camps in the world of EA. And, it was a buzz-killer. I, however, am ready to look forward and am not thinking about calling the undertaker. Here’s a blog that consolidates a lot of the heated discussion online:
http://enterprisearchitecture.ulitzer.com/node/1385669
This was all sourced from a quote in a John Zachman posting in which he stated:
This is what is killing Enterprise Architecture… every computer programmer, systems designer, software architect, solutions architect, technology architect, computer operator, PC owner, data architect, database architect, network architect, business analyst, systems analyst, enterprise architect, service architect, object architect, project manager and CIO calls whatever they want to or maybe, whatever they are doing, “Architecture.” It is chaos. No wonder we don’t have Enterprises that are coherent, integrated, flexible, dynamic, interoperable, reusable, aligned, lean and mean and working.
Indeed, last week I made mention that My Mother Has An EA Definition and discussed the challenges of YAEAF (Yet Another EA Framework) and related issues of defining, scoping and focusing an EA program for the particular use cases required.
The key point that the UDAYAN BANERJEE blog makes is that
There was NO disagreement about the proposition that “Enterprise Architecture IS dying”
The heated debate is only about why it is dying, or what it was supposed to be in the first place, or whether TOGAF represents EA, etc. Nick Gall went though every single one of the 604 comments on the subject from dozens of interested parties found:
- All agreed on one point, that EA is dying.
- There was no agreement on any other points!
It seems to me that, perhaps, EA is not dying. Conflated uses of the term “architecture” without any qualifying words like “enterprise”? Certainly. But, dying? I’m not so certain that I can quite bring myself to see that.
Before going any further, I should clarify that I’m speaking to the process of engaging in EA and not the titles that various people may purloin to operate as an XYZ-architect.
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.
Our position, from our research, is simple. Let me recount that for everyone here:
We track the “birth” of EA from the John Zachman seminal IBM Systems Journal article in 1987 entitled, “A Framework for Information Systems Architecture”(officially available to IEEE members and subscribers here:http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5387671). That means that EA is ONLY TWENTY-THREE (23) YEARS OLD.
As I recall, I had a lot of fun at the age of 23 working in the IT industry and “burning the candle at both ends” (an English idiom referring to working all day and partying all night). Is the market place of EA both serious and playful? Perhaps. But, in the world of hype cycles Gartner has observed that it takes 25-30 years for many things to reach the plateau of productivity, meaning the 25-30% of global organizations are doing something consistently well.
At the time that the concept of EA was introduced, many organizations were experiencing difficulty managing their IT plants, as technology began to evolve from a back-office support function to a business-critical capability. Starting in the 1990s, enterprises began to introduce EA disciplines into their IT organizations as they tried to come to grips with the increased complexity of IT and the changing nature of the IT organization’s relationship to the business. EA has had a rocky ride. As we point out in “So You Think You’re Doing Enterprise Architecture? (sorry, paywall link), many EA teams are doing things, under the banner of EA, which are really not EA. Common examples of this include:
- Omitting the business context step
- Starting with comprehensive documentation of the current state
- Adopting a framework, then producing every artifact in the framework without analyzing which artifacts will deliver business value and address the strategic needs of the organization.
- Focusing on solving tactical problems and never having time to devote to the strategic issues
The overall maturity of EA by practitioners is adolescent. Strong examples of successful practitioners do exist, delivering value to their business with EA; however, many more struggle with the basic steps to delivering a successful EA program. As market hype concerning alternatives to EA continues (see Business-Driven EA positioning on the hype cycle), we see EA practitioners focusing more upon EA value realization than upon creation of artifacts for their own sake. Market hype will begin to abate as a common understanding of enterprise architecture is attained (see EA Frameworks entry in our research). The winners will be the practitioners themselves and the organizations they serve as EA reaches the plateau of productivity in the next five to 10 years.
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-disillusionment/).
This is not the state of dying, but it may feel like it. My colleague, Mike Rollings, suggested that perhaps EA is in rehab right now. I’m a “the glass is half full” kind of optimist. I see EA as evolving, but it may not be clear as to what it’s becoming. As I have seen it over my past 20 years in EA, and mentioned in my Hype About the Hype Cycle blog, I see the following progression of EA that our Hype Cycle confirmed and suggest the following progression:
1980-1990s: Architecting for IT
2000s: Architecting for the Business
2010s: Architecting for the Extended Enterprise
The responses concerning groupthink that “EA is Dying”" confirm our view that EA is in the trough. We,too, see evidence of confusing definitions as the venerable John Zachman sees. Yet, I am more optimistic about the evidence of EA being applied in new ways perhaps not foreseen but clearly at the enterprise level as I noted in my examples in my recent blogs.
If EA was a person, perhaps it would, like the great Mark Twain has been attributed to having said, note that “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. Or, if EA was that famous knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it might say, “It’s just a flesh wound”.
This isn’t the first time that EA has been called out as being in the throes of death. In 2004, Robert Handler responded to Chris Pickering’s column, ”Enterprise Architecture, RIP“, in his blog entitled “Enterprise Architecture is Dead — Long Live Enterprise Architecture“.
I’d suggest that EA is evolving and, like a pupa, does not look too promising at the moment. If EA is evolving, as I contend, perhaps it’s too early to determine what it will be next. Practitioners are clearly confused, saddened, and muddled within the Trough of Disillusionment. Perhaps in 2004, and for many today, the fear is that “it will get worse before it gets better”.
My colleague, Bruce Robertson, observed:
If practitioners are frustrated, then that’s one thing. I think there are practitioners who are NOT frustrated at their lack of progress…We do NOT see fewer practitioners of [EA]; we see more.
I gave examples of successful practitioners in my blog, “Is EA really BVR (Business Value Realization“.
As I noted in my blog, Exploring Hype in the World of Enterprise Architecture, in response to @Cybersal (Sally Bean), this “slow burner” of a topic is heating up. All that energy isn’t the death rattle of EA; I think that this is the pre-amble to sorting out a challenging endeavor. If applied to what’s coming next for EA, it’s Michael Buffer’s famous words, Let’s Get Ready to Rumble, that are rattling around in my head and not Steven Slater’s Jet Blue capitulation in a famous example of “Take This Job and Shove It“.
Are you giving up on EA or are you ready for success?
Category: Enterprise Architecture Tags:
by Philip Allega | August 16, 2010 | 4 Comments
There are a lot of smart people in the world of Enterprise Architecture evangelizing a position or attempting to influence others that their view is correct. At Gartner, I find lots of smart people providing advice based upon facts, plus a zeal for understanding what works, what doesn’t and what’s going to happen next. Not just opinion is provided, unless personally qualified as such, but findings supported by the strong Gartner research methodologies. These findings are read, talked about, and discussions ensue with vendors, pracitioners, professionals and consultancies that change the world. We present to the world’s most influential and leading IT professional, leadership teams and CIOs.
Note: I am not in Gartner’s HR department, nor am I a hiring manager – these are my personal perceptions of the role of being an analyst at Gartner and, in particular, a member of the EA research community.
There’s a job opening for a research director focused upon enterprise architecture at Gartner.
I work with a lot of intellectually stimulating people that challenge my sense of the world, who drive me to support my contentions, and enrich my personal and professional knowledge. A colleague whose work I am following closely at the moment, Richard Hunter, is a world-class harmonica virtuoso. Amongst many other professional talents, Richard is author of Jazz Harp regarded as the best book written on the art of playing the harmonica.
Within the EA research team there are guitar players, sailors, world travellers, citizens of many nations around the globe, and folks with diverse interests outside the world of EA. Most have been chief architects at one point in their career. They combine their love of life with a passion for helping the world of EA do it better, more effectively, and demonstrate real business value outcomes.
Personally, I think that I have a pretty cool job. And, I get to work with what I think are some pretty cool people. Does that make me cool? Well, only if you like people like us. I continue to think of myself as a geek with, perhaps, a twisted belief that geeks are very cool.
My weeks are spent speaking with clients, working on surveys, speaking with other analysts, developing, testing and vetting research positions, writing up findings usng strong research methodologies and working through peer review with others to deliver high quality presentations at our conferences, deep engagement with our clients, and research available to a wide audience of readers around the globe.
Does this sound like you? Does this sound like a place where your talents and insights and ability to do research and give advice to others would be appreciated? Does this sound like something you’d like to do next in your career?
Again, I don’t work for our human resources department and I’m probably not the poster child for the best analyst at Gartner (there are better and much more influential than I), but I do find that this is an exciting and amazing workplace. To be fair, it is a job and there is a lot of hard work. Sometimes, there’s a lot of travel. I’ll be in Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Brazil 2010, Los Angeles, and Orlando in the last part of 2010. Some years I have travelled less, and sometimes more. Not every analyst travels, but EA analysts find a lot of face time with clients engaged in EA. For example, members of the EA Research Community and other analysts will be speaking at all of our 6 Symposium events this year (Cape Town, Sao Paolo, Orlando, Tokyo, Cannes and Sydney – see more here: http://www.gartner.com/2_events/symposium/worldwide.html)
Did I mention that there’s a job opening for a research director focused upon enterprise architecture at Gartner?
Google me. Do you want to work me? Will we have intellectually challenging discussions and collaborate together, and with our other colleagues to chart the course of EA?
Perhaps your answer is NO. That is fair. Not every job, opportunity, employer or potential set of colleagues fit everyone at the right time in ones career.
True Story About My Path to be an Analyst
I’ll be speaking at our Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2010 17-21 October. The last time I was at our Orlando event I was a client. The year was 1995. Standing in the queue for lunch one day I asked the guy in front of me how he became an analyst and what he did every day. I thought to myself, “Hey, I could do that job but it doesn’t sound that fun to me right now.” It’s 15 years later and I’ve been an analyst for 12 years. I didn’t plan on it at the time, but when the time came it turns out that it has been a good decision.
Who Are These Friends You Are Talking About?
Gartner has a very collegial environment in the research community, and it extends throughout the organization. Friendships don’t appear overnight, but the spark begins with people who have a common genuine interest in understanding the world around them and want to work with you to understand and explain it to clients who do not have the time in their day-to-day activities to compare and contrast the world outside to their world inside their organizations. I have a strong set of friendships that have been strained and tested through working together closely and, in many cases, have been strengthened through spending personal time together outside the work environment. If you’ve been to a Gartner event or been a research client, some of these names may be familiar to you:
That should give you a good idea of some of the folks I’ve got to know inside, and outside, of work at Gartner. Of course there are over 650 analysts, speaking 45 languages, in 80 countties, handling 200,000 client inquiries and 12,000 vendor briefings to help 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations every year. To be fair, I haven’t met all of them or all of the 4,000 people that work for Gartner as closely as some; but, to me, it’s a great place to work.
NOTE: For my colleagues that are reading this that I may have inadvertantly left out, I’ve still got the love but I’m just sharing some examples for those reading this blog.
Perhaps your answer is YES, I’d like to be a Gartner analyst. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Hey, I’m smarter than that guy, Philip Allega, and want to make a difference” or “I know more about EA than most and want to work in an intellectually stimulating environment with other people who know more than most about EA”.
Whatever your motivation, I’d like to invite you to consider applying for this position (note: please press the “apply now” after reading the description on this link , there’s some administrative legwork to egister yourself on the site, and please go for it).
Category: Careers Enterprise Architecture Gartner Analyst Tags: Gartner Analyst
by Philip Allega | August 13, 2010 | 3 Comments
Today, 13 August, is International Left Handers Day. According to Wikipedia, 7-10% of the population are left handed, linkshander, sinistra, linkerhanden, vanster, bal, izquierda. I, too, am left-handed. As many who know, I am in my right mind and those who are right handed are dominated by the left side of their brain (note: other qualities and links to left-handed lore can be found on google, or try this different wikipedia entry that explores all things left-handed).
Throughout my career I have observed that many of my colleagues in IT are left-handed. My first job was for a mortgage bank. I was lucky enough to be drafted in to support the automation effort of a fully manual operation and was able to live, and learn, through my first full waterfall lifecycle. My title was, originally, “computer” until they realized that more appropriate titles were suitable for MIS (management information systems) type people. I was amazed, then, at how many of us were left-handed and, to be honest, sort of revelled in it.
My last job within an IT organization, before becoming an analyst, was as a member of IT leadership team at Taco Bell Corp., then a subsidiary of PepsiCo. I worked with a great team, the majority of whom were left-handed. I noticed this during the very long round of interviews prior to my offer (I recall that the number of interviews was around 18), and was pleased to accept and join an august body of left-handers. For those of you who are wondering: yes, I did play the role of chief architect there, transforming the IT landscape in support of business needs.
In a completely unscientific survey of my colleagues in the EA research community at Gartner I discovered:
- 24% Left-handers
- 71% Right-handers
- 6% Ambidextrous
Noting ambidextrous, I wondered about “How Left-Handed Are You?” and thought I’d share a link to this little quiz to establish your hand dominance. Overall, however, I was not surprised to see a higher percentage of left-handers than in the population at large (note: not all analysts responded, the pool was totally random, only 17 people replied, I did not apply any test for statistical significance, this was completely unscientific).
During the polling phase of my (very) unscientific study, Michael Blecher echoed my earlier comments by noting this personal observation:
I observed rather early on in my career in the late 60s and early 70s that there seemed to be a disproportionate number of lefthanders in the IT field; I do not know if that still is the case. I think this may have gotten closer to the general average as technology became more mainstream (i.e. coding moved from detailed 3GLs like Assembler Language to 4GLs).
Further anecdotal evidence of left-handed dominance in our field of interest occurred to me at both of our EA Summit conferences in Las Vegas and London this Spring. I was struck by the number of attendees and vendor representatives who are left-handed.
Could this be the reason that enterprise architects struggle? Is it the challenge of living in a right-handed world? Could that be the source of frustration for so many enterprise architects seeking to demonstrate business value and relevance to their leadership teams?
Alas, I think that is NOT the reason for this struggle. But, it does add some levity into an otherwise serious topic.
But, that still leaves me wondering: Are you left-handed, right-handed or ambidextrous AND an enterprise architect?
Closing note: If you are left-handed and want to read more about being left-handed, consider this site for references to published materials concerning left-handedness: http://www.left-handersinternational.com/
Category: Enterprise Architecture Uncategorized Tags: Enterprise Architecture, left-handed
by Philip Allega | August 11, 2010 | 3 Comments
Okay, my Mother doesn’t really have a definition for EA; but, there’s nothing in the way of her doing so. Sometimes, I secretly wonder if she’ll develop her own framework, stoke up a marketing engine, start up a journal, and then blog to others about how cool she is. Once you get her going, my mother is a force of nature to be reckoned with; but, luckily, she’s not coining EA frameworks or new definitions at this time.
It’s true that EA can bring many benefits to many people and many organizations given differing requirements, desires, perceptions and cultural, political, and stakeholder beliefs. As a result, it’s easy to define it in many ways that serves these contraints and belief systems. The latest definition I’ve read came from South Africa stating:
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the continuous practice of describing the essential elements of a socio-technical organization, their relationships to each other and to the environment, in order to understand complexity and manage change.
If they’d only add a framework/approach to this definition I could notch my list of EA frameworks/approaches I’m tracking up by one (note: if you’re curious, I’m at 77 right now and if you’ve got one, please let me know). For those of you who aren’t used to reading with a sarcastic voice, please try using sarcasm when you say (out loud):
The world really needs yet another definition of enterprise architecture
<large, tired, shoulder shrugging sigh>
It’s extremely frustrating that, 23 years after Zachman’s seminal article that we’ve found ourselves in a state of “my definition/framework/approach to EA is better than yours”. However, the rules behind market commoditization suggest that it has always been thus. EA is, after all, very new to both IT and business. Most IT professionals are aware of something that is a “<fill in the blank> architecture”, where <fill in the blank> can be anything, or mean anything, according to how a person in the IT department wishes to qualify the term “architecture”.
Over the last year there was a long set of entries, now mysteriously missing, on a LinkedIn Group for EA in response to a solicitation to resolve EA definitions. Nick Malick had an interesting discourse on that experience and the results of the South African work referenced earlier. Brenda Michelson also weighed in with support for a canonical defintion of enterprise architecture. The results of the LinkedIn experience have, unfortunately, disappeared into the ether; however, the responses themselves (for those of us paying attention to the exercise) reinforced the reality that defining EA is a “slippery business”.
I always think about the activity of defining EA for a particular organizations current iteration of EA as an exercise not too dissimilar to when Rocky was chasing the chicken (if you’ve never seen this, here’s a link to that scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoEEPoBwf7Y). It’s difficult, but not impossible, and you learn a lot from having gone through the exercise.
DEFINING EA COMES DOWN TO YOU
Hopefully, at the end of such an exercise, you’re in a position to defend your current stance as to what EA means to your organization at this point in time given the cutural and political realities plus the needs of both your business, at large, and the needs of specific stakeholders across your organization.
I am not saying that definitions are not helpful. They are extremely helpful. Indeed, the act of re-defining something helps bring clarity to what you mean by a particular phrase. Indeed, words change meaning over time as well – some leave the lexicon and others provide new meaning.
Sometimes, though, this act of definition by various groups may be similar to the introduction of a neologism. My boss, Richard Buchanan, often asks us if we “grok” something. The term “grok” came from a science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein. I’m not sure if this is six degrees of separation, but I was in junior high school with a “Heinlein” whose family claimed a close family relationship with the author. Regardless, “grok” is a neologism and I hope that “EA” doesn’t become one – can you “grok” that?
It may just be that all of these definitions conflate the desire to qualify something in the vernacular (the common tongue in which the words are used) and the desire to create a lingua franca definition (one that everyone can share regardless of their mother tongue or, indeed, regardless of the vernacular of a particular profession). I’m not saying that this is good, or bad, I’m just wondering out loud on this blog.
HEY, DOESN’T GARTNER HAVE A DEFINITION?
Of course we do. We have to have a definition by which we can advise clients and judge how well practitioners, vendors and consultancies are engaged in the creation, delivery and execution of EA. This allows us to understand, research, and comment upon the state of EA and its continuing evolution. Stretching back to my days as an analyst at META Group, I’d count this as revision 3 since 1998.
Enterprise architecture (EA) is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution. The scope of the EA includes the people, processes, information and technology of the enterprise, and their relationships to one another and to the external environment. Enterprise architects compose holistic solutions that address the business challenges of the enterprise and support the governance needed to implement them.
A mouthful, to be fair. And, to be honest, a big stretch for most practitioners. As a result, we are able to gauge the market against this definition.
I’d suggest that there are more fundamental truths than exacting definitions. We’ll be exploring these fundamental truths in further research this year.
Definitions are an excellent heuristic against which to judge, and define, your own EA program.
I think that it’s important for EA programs to not get hung up on particular definitions or specific frameworks but to make certain that they define EA for their organization, at this point in time, and get an EA Charter (note: link for current Gartner clients to toolkit) to qualify what EA means to you, for this iteration.
Next iteration? Re-define what it means to you the next time around.
As we all get back to work and step away from this blog, let’s be careful not to get caught up in the hype surrounding another definition or YAEAF (Yet Another EA Framework).
DOES THIS MEAN THAT A CANONICAL DEFINITION IS NOT NEEDED (OR POSSIBLE)?
My hypothesis is that an aggregated, high-level, definition that encompasses many variations will, eventually, bubble to the surface. I suspect that this will come out of academia and not from a particular consultancy or other type of EA market vendor (note: that said, vendors should take note to get past this hype and solve point solutions as I noted in this blog). That would, indeed, be helpful. Yet, I’m not of the belief that today’s practitioners have to wait for that time to arrive. Indeed, Gartner has predicted that much of the marketplace competition over commercialized versions of EA definitions (note: please seriously consider if your favorite framework is making someone money when you consider what’s commercial and what’s not) will take >10 years to unravel.
Oh, and let’s not get my mother all riled up about EA or we’ll all wish we hadn’t done so.
Category: Enterprise Architecture Tags:
by Philip Allega | August 11, 2010 | 5 Comments
Personally and professionally, it’s very exciting to see the blogosphere and twitterverse abuzz about the findings from Gartner’s Enterprise Architecture Hype Cycle, 2010. I’m certain my excitement over this topic just adds to my credibility as a geek (if not, have a look at this video from Norway about .net vs. java development: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Px-GHPxB4I).
Mike Walker chose to blog about this (see http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2010/08/gartner-2010-hype-cycle-for-enterprise-architecture.html) as did a a couple of others, including:
I’ve also seen this picked up on other “news services” as well, including http://www.zycko.com/news/800017411-Enterprise_architecture_integrates_business_with_IT, http://www.ciol.com/Enterprise/Enterprise/News-Reports/EA-to-bridge-gap-for-business-and-IT/139781/0/ & http://biztech2.in.com/india/news/enterprise-solutions/enterprise-architecture-enters-trough-of-disillusionment-gartner/88972/0.
Further recounts of the news that the Hype Cycle is in existence were also find in the morning’s scan:
The last one is in Dutch. I love it when I see my name in print in languages I can’t read fluently. I still have a copy of an article with my picture from Slovenia that quotes something I was talking about when I addressed every CIO in the country during a conference in 2003. I don’t read Slovenian and can’t recall if I said anything worth remembering. I do hope it all sounds good in Dutch.
Enterprise architecture “news” doesn’t always happen that quickly, so it’s interesting to see how, like the phone game I played as a child, the facts in our research can quickly become garbled in translation. For those of you not familiar with the phone game, I quote wikipedia:
…the first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.
To be fair, it’s not that terrible, but there are a few interesting observations about some different interpretations of key points.
EA and Strategy. First off, I think it’s only fair to point out to a number of practitioners that, from the perspective of Gartner analysts, the META Group analysts Gartner acquired in 2005, and leaders in this field such as Larry DeBoever (most recently at EADirections) and Richard Buchanan (today at Gartner) – EA is the bridge between strategy and implementation. As such, when strategy is absent or when EA value is proven, EA practitioners do find themselves engaged in the development of strategy and have done so for many years (see some of the examples I mentioned in a recent blog: http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/08/10/is-ea-really-bvr-business-value-realization).
It is, partially, for this lack of clarity as to the relationships between EA and Strategy (recognizing that, sometimes, EA is Strategy) that we placed EA coming just out the trough of disillusionment. Furthermore, when we look at the extended value proposition of leaders in IT and EA we see that their roles take on more than we have traditionally assumed that they would be capable of doing for their organization.
This continued misunderstanding that EA programs have little to do with business strategy was echoed in Adraina Grigoriu’s critique of Gartner’s EA Hype Cycle, 2010 (see http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ea_matters/2010/08/gartners-ea-hypecycle-critique.php), when he expressed some surprise that EA architects might be involved in developing strategy for their company.
If you don’t believe Gartner when we say that this happens, perhaps the 2006 book by Ross, Weill, and Robertson may help show further instances where this has been happening since 2006, and earlier: Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution.
The Overall Positioning of EA. EA as a concept has been around for more than 20 years, since John Zachmann introduced it in the “IBM Systems Journal,” vol. 26, no. 3, 1987. IBM Publication G321-5298, but the discipline is not yet mature. At the time the concept was introduced, many organizations were experiencing difficulty managing their IT plants, as technology began to evolve from a back-office support function to a business-critical capability. Starting in the 1990s, enterprises began to introduce EA disciplines into their IT organizations as they tried to come to grips with the increased complexity of IT and the changing nature of the IT organization’s relationship to the business. EA has had a rocky ride. As we point out in “So You Think You’re Doing Enterprise Architecture?“, many EA teams are doing things, under the banner of EA, which are really not EA. Common examples of this include:
- Omitting the business context step
- Starting with comprehensive documentation of the current state
- Adopting a framework, then producing every artifact in the framework without analyzing which artifacts will deliver business value and address the strategic needs of the organization.
- Focusing on solving tactical problems and never having time to devote to the strategic issues
The overall maturity of EA by practitioners is adolescent. Strong examples of successful practitioners do exist, delivering value to their business with EA; however, many more struggle with the basic steps to delivering a successful EA program. As market hype concerning alternatives to EA continues (see Business-Driven EA), we see EA practitioners focusing more upon EA value realization than upon creation of artifacts for their own sake. Market hype will begin to abate as a common understanding of enterprise architecture is attained (see EA Frameworks entry in our research). The winners will be the practitioners themselves and the organizations they serve as EA reaches the plateau of productivity in the next five to 10 years.
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-disillusionment/).
Isf EA business-driven or is “business-driven EA” something different? Going back to my comments on EA and Strategy, I think that it’s important to reflect upon the hype of the entry we entitled “business-driven EA”. We noted that this will be obsolete before it ever hits the plateau (see the graphic here: http://www.gartner.com/hc/images/201646_0001.gif).
Gartner’s definition for many years, and that of META Group’s before, begins with:
Enterprise architecture is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change…
As we stated in our research, “Business-driven EA” is a term used by pundits, vendors, consultancies and practitioners who seek to differentiate themselves by redefining enterprise architecture as a new discipline that is more aligned with the business and to differentiate themselves from misperceptions of the long-held definition of EA. Many advocate the development of a “business architecture” as if it were a new concept and thus struggle to clarify their distinction beyond a desire to add fear, uncertainty and doubt concerning the work of enterprise architects.
Enterprise architects have been observed to use the term “business-driven EA” as a way to:
- Garner business interest in EA
- Relaunch limited enterprise technical architecture (ETA) efforts to focus more broadly on the business context, enterprise information architecture (EIA), enterprise solution architecture (ESA) and enterprise business architecture (EBA)
- Relaunch a failed EA program that had not translated business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change
Enterprise architecture (when properly practiced) has always been “business-driven.” As organizations mature in their understanding of EA, realizing that it has always been based on business context, enterprise architecture will evolve out of the Trough of Disillusionment. As this happens, we believe the use of the term “business-driven EA” will wain into obsolescence.
Tom Graves recent blog (see http://weblog.tomgraves.org/index.php/2010/08/10/hoist-by-their-own-petard/) seems to believe that Gartner”…‘discovered’ business-oriented architecture somewhen in the past couple of years”; this just shows that we must not have been that good in communicating our message about what EA is, and has been, to Tom (sorry, Tom).
Tom noted that Gabriel Mortno, of Microsoft’s internal Enterprise Strategic Planning unit, posted a blog (see http://weblog.tomgraves.org/index.php/2010/08/08/microsoft-breakthrough-in-ea/) on what Gabriel described as a ‘breakthrough’ in enterprise-architecture, “A Breakthrough: Maturing EA to be a Catalyst to Transform the Company“. As Tom noted, this should have been no surprise to those who have always known that EA must be linked to the business; but, Tom missed the point that we see “business-driven EA” as not making it to the plateau of productivity because, to be curt, savvy practitioners are already recognizing the EA has ALWAYS BEEN business-driven and didn’t need a new qualifier. He makes that point that he sees EA coming up the slope of enlightenment and we, too, see EA coming out of the trough (see http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/08/09/good-news-ea-coming-out-of-trough-of-disillusionment/).
As I have seen it over my past 20 years in EA, I see the following progression of EA that our Hype Cycle confirmed and exposed the following progression:
1980-1990s: Architecting for IT
2000s: Architecting for the Business
2010s: Architecting for the Extended Enterprise
So, leaders have been seeing EA applied to the four walls of the business for some time and those further out in front are applying this to the extended enterprise of their business ecosystem. This is beyond where most are and why some of those profiles just entering the hype cycle seem foreign, and out of place, to many practitiioners. There’s more of this to be explored in our research over the coming year.
I hope that this further engages discussions in the “hype” over the “hype cycle” for EA in 2010. Overall, it has been very exciting to engage in this online dialogue concerning Gartner’s EA Hype Cycle, 2010.
Category: Enterprise Architecture Hype Cycle Tags:
by Philip Allega | August 10, 2010 | 5 Comments
Recent conversations with mature, and leading, practitioners and vendors who support organizations engaged in the process of enterprise architecture (EA) are revealing a common trend: doing EA without ever using the term EA.
This isn’t surprising. We’ve seen this occur on and off for over 10 years. As EA gets use outside of IT, the heavily laden terms of art we use in IT get left at the door. These terms are part of the language we use in IT, but aren’t recognized or appreciated by business as often as by those within the IT organization.
Increasingly, EA vendors are talking about EA use cases to derive business value and, as such , are focusing on the business value proposition as the way to sell EA not only into IT , but also into the business. Please note that these are vendors who, on a daily basis, are knocking on real customer doors and talking to real business and IT people. Independently, from my personal vantage point they all appears to be distancing themselves from the EA name (note that that is a personal observation and not a fully vetted Gartner opinion).
In the recent book, The Real Business of IT, the authors Richard Hunter and George Westerman get down to it when they note that:
The real value – and the real effort – lies in helping business managers identify how to change the business and then helping them play their roles in implementing those changes
As I noted in my blog this past Monday, for EA programs, this has always been true. The process, when done properly, helps identify the future state that the organization desires and EA core teams facilitates other functions in their consumption of that advice, communicating the degree to which change happens or doesn’t happen given the future state desires.
To do so, amongst other things noted in Hunter and Westerman’s book, requires IT investment transparency:
- At Intel, for example, they have been balancing the risk/return for projects & ongoing operations for most of the past decade.
- At a European bank they are using EA to bring visibility between EA and the investment portfolios by implementing a business change dashboard that pull in familiar elements in EA efforts (projects against goals and strategies, projects versus desired capabilities within portfolios, capabilities and processes in support of goals and strategies).
- At an International Insurance firm they are using EA to manage distributed strategy planning programs to support prioritize investments
Further, I shared the use of EA at two other companies (recounted here):
- 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.
What are these companies doing with EA that is different from the way others have traditionally used EA? They using EA to deliver BUSINESS VALUE and NOT the value within the confines of the IT budget alone.
As I’m completing a great read of the book, “Business Model Generation” (co-created by 470 practitioners from 45 countries), I ran across an interesting nod to the unification of business and IT via business models and the use of ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE to link up strategy, business models, applications and technology. In research exclusive to our Executive Programs clients, “Getting IT Right: Using Business Models“, Richard Hunter and Mark McDonald highlighted the connection between a business and IT decisions without getting deep into tactical IT concerns. Making this linkage with Enterprise Architecture and business modeling demonstrates the value proposition that current, or planned, investments yield in relation to strategy, business and operational models of the organization.
Isn’t IT (note that this a double entendre for the word “it” and the acronym that means Information Technology) the end-goal of every EA effort, to deliver a value proposition that the business yields? IT is more than just applications or technology applied out of context. IT is applied in the context of the business.
I’m certain that this is obvious to many, but I also know that it is a tough thing for many to wrap their head around as applicable to the job they are doing within their IT organization, for their business, today.
Is this just a cute attempt to “reinvent the wheel” or re-brand something that is already well known, but not practiced as well as it could be? If it improved proper use, I’d support such a change. Personally, I wasn’t all that impressed with the Coherency Management result from a number of smart pundits and practitioners of EA, led by Gary Doucet, John Gotze, Pallab Saha and Scott Bernard. At the end of the day, I thought it looked like another attempt to “put lipstick on the pig” (for non-native English speakers, such idioms I use can be easily be deciphered online at sites such as this one: http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/). It’s not that there wasn’t well meaning, and informative, attempts to determine what EA 2.0 was but it was that it didn’t break new ground.
So, how would BVR “break new ground”? It’s much in the same vein as when business strategists began to realize that strategies created are not the same as strategies that are executed. Many EA practitioners can recount the long tales of EA models and advice created but never consumed. Perhaps the focus on Business Value Realization would reinforce the execution side of EA that challenges so many practitioners today?
Mike Walker’s comments yesterday on my blog helps illustrate the second generation of EA that focuses upon the business first and solutions and technologies second. The third generation, building upon the success of the prior generations, appears to be executing and delivering the combined value of IT and business together and not as seperate, yet sometimes related, things.
3 years ago I wrote a paper entitled “Select an Effective Name for your Enterprise Architecture Effort“. Much of the advice there remains true to this day; in particular, “Because some historical baggage and misperceptions are associated with the term “enterprise architecture,” planners should consider calling their own enterprise’s initiative by a name that resonates better with the organization’s strategy and culture.”
A client discussion this morning underlined the difference of an EA effort that engaged in the planning and migration aspects of the overall IT environment but struggled with the ability to communicate the effect upon the business. This long time practitioner bemoaned the fact that EA wasn’t sought after to help bring about cultural or transformational change to the business because the business leadership team lived in “ice palaces”. EA, for this organization, is not yet ready or capable of making that leap to business value realization because they still have to overcome the first challenge on the value path to introduce new thinking about IT investments and their relationship to the business. Cultural, political and long term perceptions about what IT means to the business will be difficult obstacles on the path to demonstrating anything that remotely resembles “business value realization”. I am certain that many of our readers will feel closer to this example than to EA programs who are clearly demonstrating realized business value.
Is EA really BVR? For some, yes. For others, they’d like it to be. For a larger set of practitioners, this sounds like a dream they’d like to make reality.
If you think your EA program has this nailed, let me know at philip.allega@gartner.com. I’d love to add you to our ever-growing list. If you want to go public with your success, please do so with my help or on your own.
Category: Business Value of IT Enterprise Architecture Tags: business value of EA, Business Value of IT, EA, Enterprise Architecture, Naming EA
by Philip Allega | August 9, 2010 | 8 Comments
I 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:
by Philip Allega | August 6, 2010 | 4 Comments
Right on the heels of Gartner’s release of our Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture, 2010, a twitter follower was asked about why we need to discuss “hype” concerning such a “slow burner” topic such as enterprise architecture (EA). It’s a fair question.
The never ending “discoveries” of better ways to do EA sometimes remind me of inventors claiming a revolution in a new mousetrap or, as I saw recently, a new way to break an egg.
Indeed, as our analysis progressed, we were surprised to discover a number of interesting things about the state of market of practitioners, vendors, consultancies and others involved in the world of EA. For those who do not have client access to our published research, this picture of the resulting hype cycle illustrates some interesting overall findings:
- Smack dab in the middle of everything are “EA Frameworks”. We predict that it will take more than 10 years to resolve the market dynamics of commoditization concerning these competing notions of how to engage in a successful EA program and which artifacts are important. Commoditization is coming, but it may not be from within these groups, or individuals, who evangelize their “framework” as being the right way. Indeed, it may come the tool vendors themselves who seek to provide solutions to problems and not to faithfully completing framework artifact creation efforts. The level of hype is beginning to dissipate as practitioners and vendors see through these evangelists and get on with the real work of making their program successful. I was recently pleased to Gabriel Morgan, Principal Architect in Microsoft IT’s Enterprise Architecture Team at Microsoft, recognize his breakthrough in “aligning IT and the Business”, as he puts it in his blog entitled, “A Breakthrough: Maturing EA to be a Catalyst to Transform the Company”.
- As we noted in our recent press release, “Gartner, Inc.’s 2010 Hype Cycle for enterprise architecture (EA) reveals that two generations of EA, one currently focusing on IT-oriented practices and the other rising to focus on integrating and engaging with the business. The Hype Cycle also shows how EA will further evolve and how enterprise architects will utilise and govern EA within the business in the next 10 years.” Early-generation EA, situated on the right side of the Hype Cycle, is marked by long-standing and well-practiced approaches such as enterprise technology architecture (ETA) and architecture assurance that have been supported by traditional and federated approaches to EA. The second generation has made the connection to the business, but the as EA practitioners have become more business-focused and organizations have become more hyperconnected, new approaches of managed diversity and middle-out have emerged on the Trigger slope, forming the latest generation of EA. These disciplines are employed by end-users to try to integrate and engage with the business as a partner.
- Radical changes are just past the trigger point and are being adopted by leading organizations engaging EA as part of the value proposition noted in the recent book, The Real Business of IT. “Leaders”, as shared within this book, of IT value are only represented by 15% of IT organizations worldwide. In following the value path described in this revolutionary book (my humble opinion), the approaches they engage in are supported by the definition of EA as “…the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective organizational change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the organization’s future state and enable its evolution”. If we used these 15% as a proxy for leading organizations, this is where we are seeing such leaders leapfrog market arguments about which framework is right or wrong and adapting new techniques covered in the profiles labelled “Visualization, Simulation and Optimization for Enterprise Architecture” and “Hybrid Thinking’s Impact on EA”. Close followers are focused upon the “Middle-Out Approach”, “Enterprise Information Architecture”, “Enterprise Solution Architecture” and “Business Capability Modeling”.
- The overall state of Enterprise Architecture is just coming out of the Trough of Disillusionment. We track the “birth” of EA from the John Zachman seminal IBM Systems Journal article in 1987 entitled, “A Framework for Information Systems Architecture”(officially available to IEEE members and subscribers here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5387671). That means that EA is ONLY TWENTY-THREE (23) YEARS OLD. As I recall, I had a lot of fun at the age of 23 working in the IT industry and “burning the candle at both ends” (an English idiom referring to working all day and partying all night). Is the market place of EA both serious and playful? Perhaps. But, in the world of hype cycles Gartner has observed that it takes 25-30 years for many things to reach the plateau of productivity, meaning the 25-30% of global organizations are doing something consistently well. The lack of consistency in definitions concerning the work done by practitioners to do something under the banner of EA. Well-meaning efforts to homogenize EA by framework creators (my list that I’m tracking is up to 77) have not fared well, to date. Again, market economics will help; but, it’s the practitioners themselves, supported by tool vendors focused upon solutions and, indeed, universities seeking to teach a comprehensive view of EA that goes well beyond a single framework (the notion of EA management patterns at the Technische Univeritat Munchen is heading in this direction can be seen here: http://wwwmatthes.in.tum.de/wikis/eam-pattern-catalog/home) will consolidate EA firmly as a commonly understood effort within the next 5-10 years.
So, yes, sometimes EA appears to be changing slowly. Our hype cycle helps understand the state of EA, today, after 23 years in the market and predicts change over the next decade. More information on this hype cycle is also on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/Gartner/gartner-hype-cycle-for-enterprise-architecture-2010-4905726. Please share your opinions with us.
Category: Enterprise Architecture Hype Cycle Tags: EA, Enterprise Architecture, Hype Cycle
