Stop "Fake" Analysis

I love "fake" news -- the kind presented on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (see Fake News Follies). I totally concur with Bill Moyers who, appearing recently as a guest on the show, said: "You [Jon Stewart] are one of the few people who can get the truth insinuated. If Mark Twain were back today he'd be on Comedy Central."

What I very much dislike is "fake" analysis, especially when it comes from a reputable research firm like AMR.

The headline of a recent AMR Research Alert Highlight grabbed my attention.

 Alert Highlight
Enterprise Architect: A Strategic Role for the Demand-Driven Enterprise
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Eric Austvold

Great title, right? The only problem is vacuous content. This is a classic example of what I wrote about in an earlier posting -- "How Much of EA is BS?"

"It seems that anytime you put people into a position where they feel obliged to talk about things that they don't really know very much about, you're apt to get a lot of BS."

Mr. Austvold, in this article, has taken the liberty of freely shuffling his use of terminology back and forth between "enterprise architect," "IT architect," and "enterprise IT architect." I'm sorry to complain, but it strikes me that this lack of descriptive specificity is reflective of someone who doesn't quite grasp the actual role played by enterprise architects.

While it might seem perfectly reasonable and logical to metaphorically compare an architect used for remodeling a house with an enterprise architect used for transforming a company's supply chain, as Mr. Austvold does in this article, I find that the more times I read through this AMR Alert Highlight, the more convinced I am that this author does not understand how enterprise architecture is actually practiced in the real world.

There's a problem here. For some reason, people in IT just love the notion of architecture. At the same time, though, no one seems to knows how to define what architecture actually means as it applies to IT. This impedance mismatch between what one person thinks they're saying and what another person thinks they're hearing leads to some awful misunderstandings.

One organization is trying to tackle this issue head-on -- IASA, the International Association for Software Architects.

IASA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and sharing of issues related to software architecture. Their mission is to serve as a driving force for research and standards which advance the understanding of software architecture.

The IASA web site includes some excellent Resource Links which are listed below:

World Wide Institute for Software Architecture	www.wwisa.org
SEI Architecture	http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ata/ata_init.html
Bredemeyer Consulting	http://www.bredemeyer.com/
EA Community	http://www.eacommunity.com/
Global Enterprise Architecture Organization	http://www.geao.org/
Institute for Enterprise Architecture Developments	http://www.enterprise-architecture.info/
Enterprise Architecture Interest Group	http://www.eaig.org/
Software Architectures	http://www.softwarearchitectures.com
The open group architecture	http://www.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf/
Software Fortresses	http://www.objectwatch.com/
Enterprise Architect Magazine	http://www.fawcette.com/ea
Convergent Architecture	http://www.convergentarchitecture.com/
Software Fortress Model	http://www.objectwatch.com/
Documenting Architecture Views	http://www.sei.cmu.edu
Architect Bootcamp	Amazon Link
Metropolis Architecture Style	http://www.pathelland.com/