Special Powers of the Architect - Abstraction

Does the Enterprise Architect have special powers?

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One idea is that the intrinsic essence of an enterprise architect is to think about abstraction. (By the way, abstraction seems to be a category that can only be defined polythetically; it appears to have many characteristic features, but we seem to be unable to work out any defining features.)

Suppose that the use of an enterprise architect (if any) is to solve practical business problems. For this purpose, enterprise architects are interchangeable with systems thinkers, just as Jaffa Cakes are interchangeable with Fig Rolls. For a large tea party or enterprise transformation programme, we might have a plate containing Jaffa Cakes and Fig Rolls and various other cakes and biscuits.

But presumably that's not the only thing that an enterprise architect is good for.

So one theory-practice question is this. What are the essential things that an enterprise architect brings to solving practical problems? If it is abstraction, what special powers (if any) does this give to the practising enterprise architect? And what are the essential things that a systems thinker brings to solving practical problems?

Abstraction is associated with a number of myths and pitfalls

• The myth that radical structural and behavioural change can and should be driven by a few simple and powerful ideas. On the misuse of general principles (Jan 2012)

• Valuing abstraction and adaptability above everything else. Avoiding thinking about mundane technology when building pure business models. IT Innovation at Small Bakery (April 2009)

• The relationship between the general and the specific is poorly supported by the prevailing tools and methods, which often reduce the question to simplistic abstraction hierarchies. TOGAF 9 - Enterprise Continuum (Feb 2009).  Instead of generalizing everything as much as possible, architects need to reason explicitly about system structure and dynamics - cohesion and coupling, composition and decomposition, change and emergence. They need to understand granularity and stratification as active choices, rather than text-book patterns. Architecture and Abstraction (May 2004)

• Mainstream EA frameworks typically appear as premature codifications of ungrounded abstractions. The attempted diffusion of these codified abstractions is then ineffectual, because these ungrounded categories lack any relevance to real business challenges. ... So instead of discussing concrete business problems, we find ourselves discussing generic categories of business problem. Towards Next Practice EA (May 2013) 

See also

• Special Powers of the Architect - Getting The Big Picture (Dec 2010)
• Special Powers of the Architect - Judgment (January 2012)

Updated 26 October 2016

Special Powers of the Architect - Judgment

Does the Enterprise Architect have special powers?

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Here is a comment I originally posted on Tom Graves' blog.

In his book The Art of Judgment (which I can strongly recommend as a counterweight to the Herbert Simon account of decision-making which dominates much IT thinking), Geoffrey Vickers talks about three related types of judgment – reality judgment (what is going on), value judgment and action judgment. I’m feel sure you will agree that an architect needs to be able to make all three types of judgment.

In practice, these three types of judgment need to be integrated, holistically, and it seems to me that an appeal to general principles reduces and perhaps trivializes the deep relationship between the different types of judgment. I can see that an appeal to principles may have some transitional value for inexperienced architects in immature or chaotic organizations, but I think this limits the quality of the judgments that can be reached.

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Here is Tom's reply.

Good points on the three judgement-types: useful distinction, likewise the importance of integration between them. That integration is essentially what I’m aiming to do with this type of framework (which, again, is still only at the ‘work-in-progress’ stage).
Tom Graves

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Tom Graves, How Useful are Principles in Enterprise Architecture (13 January 2012)
Richard Veryard, Rationality and Decision-Making (Slideshare, 18 November 2008)
Geoffrey Vickers, The Art of Judgment: A Study in Policy-Making (Sage 1965)

See also

• Special Powers of the Architect - Getting The Big Picture (Dec 2010)
• Special Powers of the Architect - Abstraction (Feb 2013)

Special Powers of the Architect - Getting The Big Picture

Does the Enterprise Architect have special powers?

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Some people think that what uniquely characterizes enterprise architects is that they are the ones who get the big picture.

If this is true, it is because EAs have differently wired brains to the rest of humanity, or because their position and practices give them a different perspective on the enterprise? For a summary of a Twitter debate on this topic, see my blogpost Getting the Big Picture.

The next question is what this implies for the relationship between EAs and the rest of the enterprise. If EAs have these special powers of perception, do other people find this threatening? And how much of the Big Picture can be communicated? For a summary of a Twitter debate on this topic, see my blogpost Selling the Big Picture.

When I raised this question on the Enterprise Architecture Network group on Linked-In, Graham Berrisford thought this was a bit tautologous. Enterprise Architecture is the big picture, therefore Enterprise Architects are the ones who have the big picture.

But it is only a tautology if that's how you define enterprise architecture and if you only recognize one kind of big picture. Stock market analysts and venture capitalists might have an entirely different big picture.

To the extent that enterprise architects have a single set of lenses for viewing the enterprise (e.g. Zachman), their claim to have THE big picture is disputable. (Hence my interest in lenscraft - the use of multiple lenses providing alternative perspectives.)

Tuomo Stauffer suggested that the big picture comes from the board. In which case EA's job is not to get the big picture but to codify it.

But my question wasn't just whether the association between enterprise architecture and big-picturehood was true, but also what this association would imply (a) for the recruitment and development of EA skills and (b) for the (possibly threatening) relationship between EAs and the rest of the management world.

See also

• Special Powers of the Architect - Judgment (January 2012)
• Special Powers of the Architect - Abstraction (Feb 2013)
• Demanding Change - Big Picture