My friend Nick Malik wrote a post - Zachman’s Fatal Flaw: No Row for Customer.  Here is my response …

Do I believe that Zachman’s Framework is fatally flawed?  No. It all depends on your perspective and that to me is defined by your EA maturity.  How we view and evaluate models and frameworks depends on how much time we have spent working on Enterprise Architecture.

Here is a simplistic example of what I mean. Think of our understanding of astronomy that we have at various stages of our education.  As an elementary school student, we learned about the solar system and the main celestial bodies.  As we progressed to secondary school, we learned about gravity and its influence on the solar system.  At a university level, even more depth and understanding of the physics adds to our understanding (and perspective) of the universe.  Would a graduate student use the grade school model to understand the solar system? No, but does that invalidate the elementary model used to introduce astronomy to grade schoolers? No it does not.

What Nick observes is that our view of  the Zachman Framework has changed, due to the growth in our EA maturity.  Most organizations that embarked on establishing Enterprise Architecture practices focused internally first.  We did this to understand what we had and what it cost to deliver the technology services required by our companies.  EA also started primarily in the IT departments and slowly began to grow outwards to assist in business and strategic planning. If we start with an internal view focused on IT what would you expect? An internal focus – think of it as getting our house in order.  This is a very “Inside-Out” perspective and the Zachman Framework served may organizations well over the past decade. That is why so much EA writing uses the “IT” and its relationship to “the Business”  model. Here is Nick’s quote about the flaw:

What is the fatal flaw?  As you can tell from the title of the post, the flaw is an “Inside-Out” perspective on the enterprise.

We are maturing our EA profession from being focused on our internal processes and complexity and moving to a customer centric focus. Now that we have a better handle on our internal house using an EA approach, the next logical place for EA to focus and show value is in strategic planning.  Nick’s quote about the customer is particularly important here:  Read more...

Mike Kavis‘ got me thinking about EA frameworks with his Twitter posts about the E2AF.

The Zachman Framework was my first introduction to an EA framework in 2004 and it continues to be a significant reference model for how I think about EA. Here is a slide of the Zachman Framework Version 2.  The geometry of Zachman sits in one and two dimensions. For example, creating lists for cells in ZF Row 1 results in one dimensional, primitives. Next, creating matrices between the Row 1 lists results in two dimensional, composites. There is no third dimension to overlay or underpin the artifacts in this model. So how are governance, security and risk management articulated?

Mike is looking at leveraging the Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework.  Here is a slide with their model – Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework (E2AF).  This framework slightly modified Zachman components like the column interrogatives to: Why? With Who? What? How? With What? When?  (Note: John Zachman has always maintained that there is no precident order to the columns in his framework). The rows have been simplified from 6 to 4 : Business, Information, Information – Systems, Technology – Infrastructure. This results in the same geometry as the Zachman Framework but the E2AF model goes a further step and introduces “Viewpoints” : Privacy, Governance, Security and Other Viewpoints are identified. These viewpoints introduce a critical third dimension and allow the framework to be view from specific stakeholder’s perspectives. Here is a link to the article that explains viewpoints in this framework.

Interestingly, I have always had a sense that communicating EA in a model/diagram needed 3 dimensions. Here is a link to my post about our EA Model from June 2007.  I was surprised how much similarity there is to the E2AF model and some linkages to the model discussed below.

Last May I collaborated with Dr Scott Bernardto introduce Enteprise Architecture to the University of Alaska.  Scott introduced me to his EA3 Frameworkwhich is based on a 3D model.  This model provides a view of an enterprise in 3 dimensions with the concepts Scott introduced like Line of Business segments and crosscutting components like governance, security, workforce.  With this framework, we get a representation of a coherent view of the enterprise.  I took Scott’s course and got hands on experience populating his EA3 cube with artifacts from a fictitious aerospace company.

There are many other EA frameworks and approaches …  Read more...

• Do you use them as thinking tools to help with EA?

On Friday, I hit an anniversary of sorts … it has been 3 years since my organization formally established the Enterprise Architect position, that I have been in.  In Sept 2007, I moved from a senior staff member to management and was able to elevate EA leadership to the management level. Even though I feel like I have been working on architecture for over 15 years, I really did not have a formal name for it. Thank you John Zachman!

Since then we have come leaps and bounds, from only having a vague understanding of what EA was or could be and now having it embedded into our processes and culture.

EA practices that we value:

• embedding EA approvals into Project Management Processes to be able to guide technology adoption and manage complexity
• embedding EA approvals into Change Management Processes to ensure implementation of new technology and changes to existing technology reliably deliver core services
• embedding EA reviews for capital requests that come to the CFO’s office for approval
• creating a Technology Watcher role to build EA practices and broaden the people working on EA
• building a 3 year technology plan with EA guiding principles at its core
• recently, doubling the EA team with the creation of a Solutions Architect role and hiring a senior staff member into the position
• building collaborative relationships around our EA methods with our partner institutions in higher education

Personally, this has been the most challenging and rewarding years of my career to date.  I will continue to looks for ways (using EA) to make our IT Services department the trusted and valued partner to our clients at BCIT.

I can’t wait to see what the next 3 years will bring!