I was wondering on the many attempts presented by so many Enterprise Architects, including myself, to either limit or simplify or handcuff the discipline in order for EA to meet the business at “eye level”. While I have always been an avid user of analogies to explain complex elements to other, I am also an academic at heart and do think that the pursuit better and advanced methodology is not vice, but a virtue.
So I am often dismayed when I read the many attempts by EA’s all over the world, when they in their desire to be more advanced, promoting increased sophistication and also complexity in our discipline, is met with a dismissal by other EA’s, due to the “business side” not understanding what EA is talking about. While there is definitely merit to the idea that only communicating in a way that no one understands, is not likely to yield any results.
I do think we must also promote the idea of lifting the shared dialogue, promoting maturing the organisation and not instantly lowering the bar is also worth pursuing. If the needed complexity to navigate in modern organisations is not understood, there could be a few reasons.
- That the EA function is not good enough at explaining it.
- That the business side is not willing to engage in dialogue outside their comfort zone.
- That the EA function has made a wildly unnecessary complicated model and framework not applicable for this business, usecase or scenario.
- That decisionmakers in complex environments may not yet be capable of navigating the full complexity scope of what is needed to make the decisions.
I think we as EA readily accept that we are guilty of 1 and 3, and this is the topic we debate on often. But I would also like to promote an idea. That in order for an enterprise to be succesful the core premise is that, EA is there to help the business, they are indeed also the business. And part of that, is working with rather complex and intricate models to gain deep insights.
By lowering the threshold or limiting the complexity of our work we do not necessarily help the business, but rather limits the extent an EA can help and it decreases the granularity of decision making. While 1 & 3 is always valid points to be aware of for any EA department, I would like to promote that we equally help the business by not by default engage on a lower level maturity discussion, but encourage, promote and help organizations to increase our level of discourse.
Complexity is not always a friend in communication, but simplifying something that is complex could also be detrimental. The issue with 2 & 4 is that it is much more change management and often not the core competency of EA’s.
But it might be that in order for EA’s to be really successful, Change Management might be our Critical Capability.