Comments on: Gartner’s Emergent Architecture – Is this really a new approach?

By: DT

DT — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:03:44 +0000

Jon, Absolutely bang on. Thanks for the visit. I too am amazed that Gartner would not have floated this as a trial balloon first with some real practioners before such a big announcement. Cheers! Leo

By: LeodeSousa

LeodeSousa — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:34:51 +0000

Jon, Absolutely bang on. Thanks for the visit. I too am amazed that Gartner would not have floated this as a trial balloon first with some real practioners before such a big announcement. Cheers! Leo

By: Jon Ayre

Jon Ayre — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:50:53 +0000

It never ceases to amaze me that when people finally realise how to do something properly (after doing it wrongly for so long) they always assume that they are the only ones who know, and rush to tell the rest of the world that they have just rediscovered the wheel. I have no problem with people describing best practices, but to refer to it as something new or emergent is somewhat naive and demonstrates a lack of understanding of what is happening in the real world (which surprises me for Gartner as they are in the position to know what is going on).

Regards
The Enterprising Architect
http://theenterprisingarchitect.blogspot.com

By: Is Enterprise Architecture Emergent? - The Next Big Thing -

Is Enterprise Architecture Emergent? - The Next Big Thing - — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:05:00 +0000

[...] Leo de Sousa also wrote a piece on how EAs are doing this today, going into a bit more detail. [...]

By: LeodeSousa

LeodeSousa — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:15:41 +0000

If I ever tried terms like “Autonomous actor”and “Inversion of Control” on my senior leadership, I would be 1) laughed out of the room or 2) looking for a new job.

Practical EA approaches use business English!

Thanks for reading the post and taking time to comment. Leo

By: Shepard Towindo

Shepard Towindo — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:28:28 +0000

Without repeating what all of you have said, I recommend Gartner to pull back. There is nothing new about what they are describing as new EA approach, most of this is common EA best practices happening today, on planet earth.

My favorite property is the “Autonomous actor”, EA has always delegated the details to delivery teams.

Regards,
Shepard

By: jeff

jeff — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:04:01 +0000

Another great blog response to the emergent architecture discussion was posted by Michael Ellyett at http://enterprisesto.blogspot.com/2009/08/ea-emperors-new-clothes-from-gartner.html — while broadly taking a similar “so, what’s new?” line as your analysis, it also offers valuable restatements/reiterations for five of the seven Gartner principles. It will be good to see the published analysis from Bruce Robertson through the Gartner channels.

By: LeodeSousa

LeodeSousa — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:24:11 +0000

Thanks very much for the feedback John. It will be interesting to see how Gartner reacts to the comments on their “new” approach. We are a Gartner subscriber and as content gets published, I will share. Cheers!

By: John Townsend

John Townsend — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:27:05 +0000

At the risk of being ungenerous, I would say that Gartner are stating the (fairly) obvious & just wonder how it took them so long to arrive at these pearls of wisdom! Certainly within HE – & I’d be surprised if this didn’t pertain elsewhere – EA never was & never could have been about top-down control & rigid enforcement of a corporate architecture, & neither should it have been. The middle-out approach is a good one but also hardly knew, having synergies with Japanese management styles, & if you take it that this is about facilitation/coordination not control/compliance then it also has synergies with the kinds of approaches to IT governance promoted by Ross & Weill ie encouraging effective behaviours in the use of IT.

At the same time there seems to be a suggestion that the ‘emergent’ approach should allows constituent parts of the organisation to do their own thing – in which event, EA may become so light touch as to vanish into thin air. If you go down this line you have to reach a point where there’s no point doing EA at all.

So overall, I suppose I’m not impressed!