I had hoped that the age of non-programming architects was over, but yesterday I was let down. I attended the monthly meeting at the "Practical SOA forum" at SINTEF where an experienced architect ("20+ years of IT experience") presentet his groups work at a large public service company in Norway. The architect explained the EA modelling work going on to build a service-oriented enterprise, showed the EA tool and portal, documented SOA guidelines, refinement of the model into BPMN (but not into BPEL), etc.
All systematic and professional, but then he went on to complain about having to spend too much time with the developers and hired consultants to help them actually understand and implement the model according to the guidelines and policies - which prevented him from playing (my word) with the model to refine it and expand it into new areas of the business...
No wonder many of the pure top-down approach SOA projects are regarded as failures.
1 comment:
Throw away your models, long live the process!
When I participated at the Enterprice Archtiecture Conference in London 2005; I participated in a "think tank" excercise where we were told to think outside the box. EA is very modell driven, with John Zackmann as an engaged promoter of Zachmans Framework. One of our most important conclusions was to throw away the models; start believe in the process.
Why? Time spent on modelling does not correspond with spent on communication along all the dimenions and levels you need to communicate; same thing goes with SOA..... I think. We can discuss this over a beer one day .... and I'm missing your CRM stuff ... but I manage.
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