Just after I returned to some sort of normality after a busy few weeks of travel, Gartner published a press release which managed to kick off a literal tsunami in a teacup across the Twitterverse.
“Gartner said that enterprise architects must be ready to embrace the inversion of control. Where in the past, they controlled all EA decision making, they must now accept that that business units demand more autonomy.”
Why all the fuss? Well, it turns out that Gartner have discovered that we EA types have been going about things in completely the wrong way in the past few years, and the ‘Emergent’ deal they have come up with means that we have to shift our game. Essentially, we’ve all been navigating with the map held upside down for far too long.
There’s not much to add that hasn’t already been well covered by @leodesousa (Leo de Sousa, BCIT) and @richter858 has (John Townsend, LJMU) who have both responded in posts from the perspective of #EAinHE. Both generally confirm that there’s not really anything new in what Gartner are saying – to us at least.
Mike Rollings from Burton Group seemed to be first past the post in responding to the release with a post entitled “Gartner wakes out of an EA induced coma…”, which I think succinctly sums up the overall reaction to the post. He’s also blogged a round-up of comments from other people across different EA groups. Others (on the back channel) responded with genuine surprise to find that we’d actually had control in first place.
Certainly from our perspective, we’ve never really subscribed or believed in totally immersion in a particular framework for our use, as it’s just too much pain for ‘small’ (read: small and/or immature) enterprises to gain traction with. Nor have we set out for the total control from the centre – that just wouldn’t work for our kind of institution across all services. It works in some cases, but as the operational model we have isn’t a one-size fits all view, it takes more finessing to generate useful outcomes. Gartner’s ‘new’ stance is one that fits more closely with what we’ve been doing all along, or at least what we *think* we’ve been doing at least.
In summary, I think we’re back to the stalwart of any EA event where the very definition of EA is discussed at some length. There is a simple solution to this predicament of searching for meaning in what we do which might help everyone relax in to just getting on with the job. Douglas Adams, in The Restaurant At The End of The Universe wrote:
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe Enterprise Architecture is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
And relax…
Related posts:
Paul lives, rides and works in Cardiff, South Wales. His work seems to largely entail fixing things and keeping wheels on. Officially, he is actively engaged and interested in Enterprise Architecture these days, but has a secret past that involved standing around on glaciers collecting meltwater samples, and walking through endless fields of wheat taking radiance measurements. 
Agree completely. I have never assumed that EA would have total control. Ours is a game of gaining confidence, cooperation and collaboration on a solution. Not an effort of universal control. Gartner has come to realize what those who I know have said all along, “we influence and discuss and hope the right decisions are made.”
Thank you for the mention in your post. Check out my latest post “What to do when waking out of an EA induced Coma…” for some suggestions to make EA truly different.
http://eapblog.burtongroup.com/executive_advisory_progra/2009/08/gartner-wakes-out-of-an-ea-induced-coma-2.html
Mike Rollings
Research Director, Enterprise Architecture
Burton Group