Not long ago I felt that Enterprise Architecture (EA) had not been growing at the pace I, at least, thought it should. I asked myself why and came up with a couple of issues. I never thought though the list would expand. I realised it does and I am not sure yet if I should quit numbering the inhibitors. This being the case, no wonder that people are reluctant about an EA development then: it may be costly, takes time and resources, its business case is not proved and the outcome may not live to expectations.
What I found until now: EA is seen as an IT architecture only. All technologies besides IT seem to be ignored. EA is overly simplified to four architectural layers with no other “views” to respond to non-IT stakeholders’ concerns. The functional architecture, a good practice in systems design, is not really adopted and Use Cases, coming from the world of software design, are not really used. There is seldom a link to the enterprise Value Chain or business model.
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