McGovern on EA-Joke

In a recent post, James "fully insured" McGovern disputes my criticism of enterprise architecture. Mostly, he was disappointed that I went after Zachman, suggesting that EA's just don't care about that anymore (which I agree). I'll add that many of them feel that FEAF and TOGAF are also a bit too 'fluffy'.

But unlike me, James seems content with the state of his Visio and Powerpoint tooling, suggesting that he and his colleagues are doing just fine.

And on the subject of "silo funding", James states, "Funding models should never look like enterprise architecture and besides they are managed by two different entities..." I'm not sure what that means. My point is that the funding model should align with your business strategy. If the strategy is to provide a seamless experience for a customer as they cross through the silos, then the funding should reflect that priority. Without proper funding, EA's become security guards with a flashlight and no gun.




BUT - the thing that struck me the most about his post was that he never actually defended the enterprise architecture discipline. This could be that he feels that it doesn't need defending. Alternatively, he could have his own frustrations with the discipline. So James, which is it?