I have argued for some time that what I truly need is a way of sketching and Enterprise Architecture in the same way as a traditional Architect sketches a building. The truth is though that the traditional Architect does not do one sketch of the building but many, from different angles and perspectives. This builds to inform the viewer about the building that he is planning. No matter what the angle though a drawing is really easy for architects and non architects alike to quickly comprehend.
In Enterprise Architecture this is most definately not the case. It seems that having no way of visualising the virtual world of computing has driven us instead to opt for complex stacks of paperwork to help us. If we are not really careful though these stacks of paperwork are simply ignored, even by ourselves. How many of us can quote all of our Enterprise domain principles from the top of our heads? These make up a realatively small amount of the documentation we produce. Is it anywonder that people with less committment to EA see it as a pointless exercise?
Unfortunately the Architecture frameworks out there don't seem to help much either. This is especially true as achieving a complete framework requires you to use combinations of the existing methods. For example whilst Zachman provides a way of classifying information it provides no process, whereas TOGAF to a certain extent is the opposite. Not only that frameworks like TOGAF are so flexible that it is unlikely you will ever get consistent uses of it.
All of this combines to make the use of enterprise architecture too complex and diverse thus stopping it from being as effective as it should be. As an Enterprise Architect I believe we must look to finding ways to simplify the way we present Architectures and make them more understandable to "normal" people if we are going to demonstrate our value.
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