Notes on enterprise-architecture development and application – for the whole enterprise, not just the IT domains
Starting point for this thread was my comment that though I agreed with Michael Ellyett that some kind of repository-based toolset was essential for enterprise-architecture, it was also necessary to trial it on paper first. Michael disagreed: I don’t think …
Been having a truly excellent back-and-forth via email on enterprise-architecture and the like with Michael Ellyett, CTO of RHE & Associates, a New Zealand/Australia-based EA consultancy and ANZ distributor for the Troux Metis toolset. I’ll try to summarise what’s been …
Michael Ellyett brought up some very good points in his comments on rethinking Zachman and TOGAF. The reply is going to have to be long, so I’ll put a ‘More’ link in at this point. 🙂
Another perhaps-not-so-minor tweak in rethinking the Zachman columns. My mistake: should have spotted it earlier. Seems that Zachman’s labelling of the ‘When’ column as ‘Time’ is a bit like his description of the ‘Who’ column as ‘People’ – it’s ‘obvious’, …
Had a few responses already to this ‘Rethinking Zachman’ set of posts, some of them as comments, others direct by email. Although the emails are obviously personal, and need to remain anonymous unless otherwise indicated, the content of one of …
To summarise this overall review of the Zachman framework over the past few posts: The rows or perspectives: Row 0: ‘Universals‘ (Zachman: not present) – core constants to which everything should align Row 1: ‘Scope‘ (Zachman: ‘Planner’) – core entities …
Finally, the last of the amended Zachman columns – the ‘Why‘ column. Zachman describes this column as ‘motivation’, and defines the primitive as ‘ends / means’. That definition would give us problems straight away, because it’s another pseudo-primitive: not ‘Why’ …
Next on the stack in the set of amended Zachman columns – the ‘When‘ column. Unlike the original ‘Who’ column, which (IMHO) was just plain wrong, the problems with Zachman’s definition for this column – ‘time / cycle’ – are …
Next in the columns of the amended Zachman framework is ‘Who‘. Presumptuous of me, perhaps, but from my understanding of what the framework is aiming to achieve, this is one place where Zachman made a serious mistake in his taxonomy, …
Next column to the right on the amended Zachman framework is ‘Where‘. Zachman describes this as ‘node / line’, and “the locations relevant to the organisation”, which is fair enough as long as we expand the meaning of ‘node’, ‘location’ …