A kind of manifesto (short version)

Enterprise-architecture is dead; long live the architecture of the enterprise? Or something like that, anyway…

Time for a kind of manifesto, I guess?

As is perhaps too usual in my writing, the full-length version of the ‘manifesto’ ended up, uh, kinda long… So here’s a short-form summary, consisting only of the highlighted statements in that ‘manifesto’: if you need more detail, refer back to the full-length version.

One point I perhaps first need to clarify: By ‘enterprise‘ (or ‘shared-enterprise’) here I do not mean the organisation-as-enterprise, but something several orders-of-magnitude larger – that which the organisation chooses (if only by default) to orbit:

Anyway, on with the show:

— We create an architecture for an organisation, about a broader shared-enterprise.

— The shared-enterprise is not, and never can be, under our organisation’s control.

— Recursion is an inherent part of the picture here, at every scale.

— In a viable architecture of the enterprise, everywhere and nowhere is ‘the centre’, all at the same time.

— The shared-enterprise is perhaps best-understood as an ‘ecosystem-with-purpose’.

— Everything within the shared-enterprise depends on everything else.

— No item in the enterprise is inherently ‘more important’ or ‘less important’ than any other.

— The purpose and reason for ‘the architecture of the enterprise’: that things work better when they work together, on purpose.

— People and their needs are the ultimate start-point and end-point of all concerns in the shared-enterprise.

— Technology is only ever an enabler – never ‘the sole centre’.

— We must always place people first in the enterprise – not the technology.

— We need to rethink how work itself is organised, within the organisation and beyond.

— Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are characteristics that every architecture must address.

— The architecture of the enterprise is inherently contextual.

— Architecture sits at the intersection of structure and story.

— Architectural methods should support and be applied to the enterprise of ‘the architecture of the enterprise’ itself.

— Work for the architecture of the enterprise takes place over multiple, overlapping timescales.

Next: what does this mean in practice? – perhaps especially for my own future work?

Watch This Space, I’d suggest? 🙂