The difference between selling EA and performing EA

Through a discussion on LinkedIn, I ran across a rather goofy blog post titled (“EA does not matter”), an obvious riff on Nick Carr’s famous HBR article.  Unfortunately, while Nick Carr is a well established business and IT contributor, the author of the blog post, Martin Palmgren, seems to have been writing articles for an astounding two weeks before levying a false attack on Enterprise Architecture. 

Masked below his obvious contempt for “things he does not understand” is a fatal flaw: he is asking for a result that EA can provide!  Mr. Palmgren is clearly of the ITIL mindset: that well defined and delivered IT services can provide a solid mechanism for both governance and alignment.  As an Enterprise Architect, I agree.  Perhaps Mr. Palmgren thinks that EA is opposed to that idea?  I don’t know.

Regardless, he shows a remarkable lack of understanding of what Enterprise Architecture is and does.  With EA fully engaged, the business would be able to see the linkage between their business goals and the IT services that Mr. Palmgren obviously desires, and therefore would be free of the need to demonstrate the ROI of infrastructure.  (ever tried to prove the ROI of good plumbing systems in a restaurant?  IT service providers have the same problem.  EA can help).

To Mr. Palmgren and the others who radically misunderstand EA, I encourage you to reach out to actual practitioners to find out what this profession is about before you launch ill-informed attacks.  It’s a good way to avoid shooting at your allies.