Saving enterprise-architecture from itself – 5: What next?
This, sadly, is not the blog-post I’d set out to write when I started this brief series.
It’s best summed up in just three words: I give up.
Seven years ago, I set out to save enterprise-architecture from itself. Who was I kidding? No-one but me, really. Idiot…
I’ve probably done some useful stuff in that time, but it feels like it’s time to pull the plug. It still needs doing – no doubt about that – but I’m not the one to do it.
One of the reasons, of course, is that whilst I might perhaps be a reasonably-adequate thinker at times, my soft-skills simply aren’t there. To put it bluntly, I’ve blown it – particularly with Len Fehskens, who deserves and needs a special apology here. Sorry, Len… and apologies to you all, really.
Another reason is cost. This project has cost me seven years of my life, on virtually no income at all. That’s a pretty severe opportunity-cost, and to be frank, I simply can’t afford it any more – not in any sense.
In a way, it doesn’t stop here, of course. I’ve done some reasonable tools over that time, and they’re available here, or in my books, or in the slidedecks on Slideshare. That’s not a bad legacy to leave.
I’ll keep this blog open indefinitely, so you’ll still have access to everything that’s here – don’t worry about that.
But I’ll mostly drop out of the Twitter enterprise-architecture stream (#entarch). And this will be my last blog-post here for a while.
I have a few enterprise-architecture commitments still to run, most of them early in the new year, but that’ll be it. It’s time to do something else: no idea what, as yet, but something else.
Many thanks to you all for tolerating my ‘crazy ideas’ as long as you did – and see you around, perhaps.
Time to go.
Tom- Sorry to see you hoisting a white flag. This quote — seen recently — sums up the EA dilemma for me:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller
Thanks, Brenda. I agree with the Buckminster Fuller quote. It’s just I’m painfully aware of the sheer scale of what has to be built in order to render the old model obsolete: it’s clear – to me at least – that we have to go right down below the roots of just about everything that the dominant culture has believed for at least the past five thousand years. And I’m very, very much aware that I’m not the right person for that job – or even in this job of clearing out the Augean Stables of ‘enterprise’-architecture. Oh well. But I hope what I’ve done is useful to some people eventually, anyway.
Tom,
Sad to see you go. Your blog was the top on my reading list.
although I would like to see you back ASAP, I wish you all the best.
Thanks, Nilotpal – I’ll no doubt be ‘back’ (if that’s the right way to describe it? – I dunno…) in some form or another, and maybe contributing a bit more usefully than I seem to have done in the past while. But what form it will take, right now I have no idea. I’ll just have to wait and see, I guess?
Hi Tom. Something I learned in my academic days – English Lit and Philosophy by the way > Knowledge is a conversation.
The discussion is the end. Not the means to the end. The conversation always falls short of an answer. Language is algebra. Reality is calculus.
The worst thing one can contribute to a conversation is a cliche. Something no one will ever accuse you of.
I have thoroughly enjoyed dipping in and out of your corner of the conversation.
All the best for tomorrow morning. If you find yourself in Melbourne again drop me a line and I will shout you a beverage of your choosing.
Thanks, Ric. “The discussion is the end. Not the means to the end. The conversation always falls short of an answer. Language is algebra. Reality is calculus.” – that’s a really good way to put it.
Will probably end up back in Melbourne fairly soon. Just have to make sure I find some way that it doesn’t take the form of living on the streets of Melbourne, that’s all. 😐 :wry-grin:
Hi Tom
I have a friend of mine that runs a wine blog, just like me (my other passion) that constantly have the same idea “I had enough” and he keeps coming back.
The fact that the dark forces sometimes wins does not mean we simply gave up.
Best
Alberto
Alberto: “The fact that the dark forces sometimes wins does not mean we simply gave up.” – agreed, though burn-out can be pretty tough at the time. An all-too-routine occupational hazard (or industrial-injury?) in this kind of work, though, as I have no doubt at all that you too know from personal experience… Oh well.
Tom,
This is just a part of a two year cycle, I hope. Two years ago you published this :
http://weblog.tetradian.com/2011/10/16/time-for-this-toad-to-move-on/
Thanks, Ivo. It’s not a ‘two-year cycle’ as such, although I’ll admit that the potential presence of the same specific eminence-grise (or bête-noire?) as in that incident did play a part in this burn-out too. Probably more to the point, I really should have taken my own advice at that time, and got the heck out of it: I’m not sure that much of anything I’ve done in the meantime has really helped much, if at all. Still somewhat struggling to find my way fully out of this one at present: it takes time…
My comment on that article contained this quote to Tom:
“But the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life. The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for his own sake.”
[Steven Pressfield – the War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles]
Tom, don’t let us push you back in the #entarch field. Take some time to discover new territories (other than #entarch) or to start new journeys in the #entarch field if you wish. (win your inner battle!)
But no matter what you do: please take us with you on your journeys during the coming decades!
(not necessarily by maintaining a blog, e.g. keeping a presence on Twitter is good enough, as @ruthmalan told me many times when I “deleted/stopped with” something abruptly…)
Thanks, Peter – and yes, good advice, that I need not merely to listen to but act on as well…
Tom, I’m saddened by this news.
I don’t know much about enterprise architecture, but what little I know, I learnt from you and Stuart Boardman. And I think I learnt the good stuff: not checklists and templates, but the stuff that really matters.
A few days ago, I asked you for a definition of enterprise architecture for my Glossary. This is what you wrote:
“Linking everything together, across the whole enterprise, on purpose, and for purpose—because things work better when they work together, on purpose.”
http://www.jackmartinleith.com/glossary/#enterprisearchitecture
No one but you could have defined EA in that way.
We have never met face-to-face, but I hold you as a friend and maverick brother in arms. And I know how exhausting this trailblazing work can be.
Like you, I do a lot of work for very little money, and ends-not-meeting is an ongoing reality. Culture is Conversations is hosted on WordPress.com because I didn’t have twenty quid to acquire a domain name and three monthsworth of hosting. And also like you (I suspect), what seems to me like a statement of the bleedin’ obvious is treated as heresy by the world-out-there. [I seem to have caught the hyphenated-words-thing from you.] We both know how frustrating that can be.
Brenda Michelson quoted Buckminster Fuller in an earlier comment:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
In the field of corporate culture, the “existing model” says that you change culture by changing people’s values. Since the 1980s, business leaders have followed the ‘wisdom’ handed down by academics and big name consultants — and the results have often been disappointing. But the model persists. No one seems to want to challenge it.
No one that is, except this crank-rebel-eccentric-troublemaker sitting here.
“Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.” – Thomas Paine
Culture is Conversations has a vacancy for a Joint Chief Instigator. Salary: none. Midnight oil burning: plenty. Indifference from the world-out-there: huge. Appreciation: very little.
The job’s yours if you want it. I’ll even return to Essex if that’s what it takes. (I grew up in Barking and went to boarding school in Earls Colne.)
I send you my love, gratitude and massive respect.
Jack
Again, thanks, Jack – and yes, well aware that you too struggle with much the same frustrations, and likewise deeply respect you for it.
On “you change culture by changing people’s values” – yes, I’d agree that the notion that the organisation is able to ‘change people’s values’ by something as crass as a list of ‘corporate-values’ printed on the back of a business-card is somewhere between laughable and deeply-worrying. That said, corporate-culture does change in line with the values and value-priorities of the people of that organisation – hence some types of interventions are feasible. It’s just we need to do a better job of indicating what they are, and where, when and why we could, perhaps should, and in certain cases most definitely should not, use them – with perhaps a key focus on responsibility and respect that often seems conspicuous only by its absence. Something we could maybe discuss in depth somewhen offline, perhaps?
On “Culture is Conversations has a vacancy for a Joint Chief Instigator. Salary: none. Midnight oil burning: plenty. Indifference from the world-out-there: huge. Appreciation: very little.” – sadly, I already have one full-time equivalent of that type of role; I’m not sure I could survive another of those – especially at the same time… 🙁
Ow!!!
Sad to see you (planning to) go!
I eagerly read your blogs, almost all of the posts.
Gives me food for thought, helps me escaping the IT centric view and helps me with dialogues.
On a practical note: I get it when there has to be food on the table too… I can’t imagine that there’s no paid job for somebody who creates frameworks/models like you do!
Good luck!
Many thanks, Joel – much appreciated.
On “I can’t imagine that there’s no paid job for somebody who creates frameworks/models like you do!” – I admit I’m probably the world’s worst self-marketer, in this field at least, but I just haven’t found anything like that kind of job – so if you do hear of one (and preferably one that would still enable me to at least retain some modicum of integrity and self-respect in the work… 🙁 ), perhaps let me know?
Tom, should you ever return to the world of enterprise architecture, perhaps you’ll consider creating something along the lines of Purpose-Led Enterprise Architecture (PLEA: “thing which is agreed upon”)or Generative Enterprise Architecture Regimen (GEAR). I’m only half joking.
Jack – yes, the “I’m only half-joking” duly acknowledged. Reality is that, to my mind, there’s no ‘enterprise’-architecture left to return to.
There’s a somewhat-sad, self-disintegrating zombie that goes around by that name, I’ll agree (and one that is at high risk of being even further lobotomised in the near-future if a certain current ‘outsider’ character whose person and, increasingly, whose work I hold in the deepest contempt is foolishly invited to intrude into that space any further than he already has). But it seems clear to me that it’s beyond recovery now: certainly within any feasible time-scale. Oh well.
Another vote of disappointment and thanks.. your influence on my thinking and work has been larger than any other contributor; I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that.
But I must say that I am a big fan of Len’s writing too.
I can see truth on both sides of this debate – TOGAF is going in a direction you don’t like, but the Open Group itself don’t *directly* control that.
However, I would proffer the observation that real sticking point here is the participation model for the TOGAF forum, not any particular person, idea, or group of people.
That model is (from what I understand) based on monetary input equating to influence. This has an effect on the diversity of voices and views feeding into TOGAF itself, with the potential to create something of an echo chamber over time.
Options?
* Get cross about it. Done. Next?
* Engage with the Open Group in terms of how their participation model could be changed? Maybe a stretched metaphor, but universities offer scholarships to people who would otherwise be excluded due to financial or other constraints.. could something be constructed along those lines? ‘Honorary Seats’ or some such.
* Herd enough cats together into some kind of ‘co operative’ where members contribute a small amount, which is then pooled into enough cash to pony up for a seat at the TOGAF table. Paying members gain some kind of insight into the (in my mind at least) internal, mysterious workings of the TOGAF forum.
Which leads me to what I think is another valid criticism, recently echoed by Adrian Grigoriu on his blog – that there is very little transparency or visibility into the workings of the TOGAF group itself. No doubt for perfectly good reasons, but it doesn’t engender a sense of trust or inclusion for those outside the tent.
There must be other constructive ideas out there?
Thanks, Mike – that first line really does help. Sitting out here on the sidelines it’s very difficult to know if my work is of any use to anyone at all, and I get trashed so often that it’s easy to believe the naysayers in their incessant assertions that my work is worse than worthless. 😐
“But I must say that I am a big fan of Len’s writing too.” – so am I. Len has been one of the very few, both in EA in general, and within the ‘TOGAF/Archimate space’ in particular, to hold out the banner for a true whole-of-enterprise scope for EA.
“TOGAF is going in a direction you don’t like, but the Open Group itself don’t *directly* control that” – the latter is true for the-Open-Group-as-organisation, but is not true for the-Open-Group-as-community – not least because the Architecture Forum and Archimate Forum of the-Open-Group-as-community are, by definition, the ones who define TOGAF and Archimate in the first place.
“monetary input equating to influence” – as Len says below, we definitely need to be careful about that type of assertion. Money does indeed buy influence of a sort in the Open Group community, but as I understand it (correct me here if necessary, Len, please?), although higher-level memberships enable an organisation to obtain more seats in forums, each organisation may only have one seat in any given forum – i.e. higher-level membership enables engagement in multiple forums, not higher direct influence in one forum. My understanding is that the influence of the higher-level memberships is more indirect – a kind of ‘follow the money’ effect, not a direct manipulation. That such influence exists, however, is all too evident in the final outcome: TOGAF in particular is a product that, in its structure and content, is strongly geared towards the needs of large IT-consultancies and large organisations, rather than to an (arguably essential) broader scope for all types of contexts and business-needs.
“the potential to create something of an echo chamber over time” – rather than the ‘influence’ question, I would recommend to place the focus much more on this concern. What we see in TOGAF especially – less so in Archimate, if sadly increasing rather than decreasing over time – is an all-too-evident example of ‘groupthink’. The circular-reasoning behind the IT-centrism so evident in both frameworks is, again, all too easy to see, and all too easy to see how it developed. What’s perhaps worrying there is that there was no recursion, no use of TOGAF on itself to challenge its own circularities – which has led directly to the sad impasse and still absurdly-IT-centric constraints that we see in both frameworks today.
“it doesn’t engender a sense of trust or inclusion for those outside the tent” – no, it doesn’t. ‘Nuff said, really. 😐
“There must be other constructive ideas out there?” – I hope there are, I really do hope there are. In my case, though, it’s really clear that I’m not the person to provide them. All I’ve done recently is makes things worse. Oh well.
Tom, Let’s talk. You have contributed a lot and provided much value. And the conversation is not over, it is really just beginning. Again, sorry I missed you when you came through California. Send me another note and we can talk.
Many thanks, Carl – and yes, will do. I’m still somewhat in burn-out, so it may be a few days yet, that’s all.
Tom, I hadn’t actually spotted this thread before, having been myself caught up in other things. That’s probably as a good thing, as I might have responded differently at the beginning.
Nobody reading this is in any doubt about the scale of your contribution, so I’ll let that one fly.
Perhaps the only real mistake you have made is making “save EA from itself” your goal. The funny thing is that the place I first came across you, the LinkedIn EA Group, is the perfect illustration of why that’s not feasible. What we see, as I’ve bemoaned too often elsewhere, is on the one hand a bunch of people bickering amongst themselves about which of them is in possession of the one true bible and on the other a bunch of people who’ve got their TOGAF certifications and think that’s all there is. I actually think the latter can be “saved” but there’s so many of them. So voices like yours are lost in the wilderness in that kind of forum.
My friend Mariel, whom you met earlier this year, characterises EAs (our kind of EAs) as “court jesters”. We provoke and challenge but we offend only those seeking offence. We don’t spend any more time drawing structure diagrams than we can possibly help but we do try to tell stories and to draw other kinds of pictures – thanks to you and Peter and Ruth and Jack.
Another friend, theoretically my boss, said “we want to sell architecture without using the word architecture”.
So maybe rather than trying to save EA, you should keep on as you have done and just not call it EA. Who cares? It’s the content, not the label that matters. If Robertson’s have put people off marmalade, let’s call it orange conserve. Join Jack in his effort to “change the conversation”.
Take a break, play some music, scratch up some money and come and visit me over here. Plenty of room now. Or go and watch the bird migrations on the Essex marshes. We’ll wait for you.
As usual, Stuart, many thanks – all of that is much-appreciated, as you know.
“I actually think the latter can be “saved” but there’s so many of them.” – yeah, probably – though it’s the fact that there are so many of them, and their numbers now growing so fast, that are perhaps the key point why any chance to repair the damage-done has probably now already been lost. Oh well.
On the other matters, yes, will take at least some of your specific-advice as above, but we’ll talk offline about that.
Thanks again, anyway.
Dulce et Decorum est
Pro Praxia Mori
It is not worth fighting battles over labels. There will always be people trying to control the “enterprise architecture” label in their own interests, and polluting Linked-In with their petty terminological squabbles. Ultimately, all that matters is some positive quality of the organization (let us call it “health” or “congruence” or “integrity”), and a positive environment for the people in and around the organization.
Therefore, Tom, perhaps you are right to stop trying to save enterprise architecture. Instead, you can do what many of your readers most value from you – focus on saving enterprise architects (and their clients) from the conceptual and ethical errors that have become attached (like ravenous jellyfish) to the “Enterprise Architecture” label.
Thanks, Richard, and yeah, you’re right, “It is not worth fighting battles over labels”. The battle has been lost now, anyway: the damage is now so deeply embedded that in reality there’s nothing left to save.
“Ultimately, all that matters is some positive quality of the organization (let us call it “health” or “congruence” or “integrity”), and a positive environment for the people in and around the organization.”
Again, yes, you’re right: that’s the real point on which the focus needs to be maintained. A pity that the frameworks that we have at present all but ignore in their entirety what you’ve described above, but we need to find a way to create appropriate workarounds for that problem, that’s all.
“attached (like ravenous jellyfish)” – yeah, a painfully-accurate metaphor/simile/whatever.
As for the rest, well, yeah, I’ll do what I can. At least I have a rather better awareness that some folks do seem to value what I’ve been trying to do (even if most in ‘the trade’ at present so clearly don’t). Yet also, yeah, the first requirement is going to have be an acceptance that – for me at least – enterprise-architecture is dead. Oh well.
Tom,
I hope that you are not serious, and after some down time you will be back. I appreciate your thoughts and your fighting the “impossible” fight.
Thank you and hope to hear from you soon.
Hi Voytek – many thanks, of course, and also for your own contributions to the development of ‘the trade’.
In a sense, yeah, I have to accept that I do need to be serious about this, and give up on trying to revive what is now little more than an already-festering corpse. It’s clear that it is already too much an ‘impossible fight’, perhaps for almost anyone.
But also in a somewhat different sense, don’t worry – once I get past this current burn-out, I will continue to do something that would almost certainly be relevant in the space that would have been called ‘enterprise-architecture’ if it had not already died. I don’t yet know what exactly that will be, but as I said to Richard above, I’ll do what I can – perhaps trust me at least on that?
Mike Burke writes:
“That model is (from what I understand) based on monetary input
equating to influence.”
I simply do not understand why this falsehood gets so much traction. It is almost always based on assumptions, not on any evidence.
All Open Group member organizations, regardless of their member status, receive one vote in the forums they participate in.
The levels of membership determine the number of forums the member organization’s employees may participate in. For most members, the only forum that matters is the Architecture Forum, which is responsible for TOGAF.
Platinum members, who pay the most, get a seat on the governing board. The governing board does not have any influence over the content of standards. The governing board oversees things like how the staff gets paid and whether the business plan makes sense.
I am sympathetic to the argument that the cost of a Silver membership represents more of a burden to a company with a few employees than it does for a company with a few dozen or a few hundred employees, but the simple fact is that the cost of supporting a member company is largely insensitive to the number of employees the company has. The Open Group cannot provide its services to its member companies at a loss. Other companies are allowed to function by their necessary business models, I don’t see why The Open Group can be fairly criticized for doing so as well.
len.
(Len, I’ve taken the liberty of editing this comment of yours immediately-above to correct the spelling-error re ‘fairly’, as per your subsequent comment, and deleted the second comment as it was now redundant. I did so because I presumed you’d prefer the comment above to carry the intended sense, on its own. I trust this meets your approval?)
Yes, I’m fine with these edits.
Thanks,
len.
Tom, I always saw you as somebody sharing our vision and view on enterprise architecture. I am sad that you are giving up. I wish you all the best and maybe you take a peek on how we are progressing because you can see whether you have been right.
Cross my fingers for your future.
All the best,
Joerg