EA - Enterprise Architecture or Extreme Aggravation

- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys

In my last post, I talked about the movie My Cousin Vinny and the lessons it held for Architects about sticking to the basics, understanding your customers and understanding yourself.
In this post, I am going to look at The Pursuit of Happyness (Year of Release: .2006; Director: Gabriele Muccino; Our Architect: Chris Gardner played by Will Smith; Architect's Character: Sales Man turned stock broker who know how to dream big and keep it going).

‘The pursuit of happyness’ tells the story of the trials and tribulations of semi-successful sales man for whom every day is a struggle. The essence of this movie is how to dream big and manage it along with the daily struggle. We usually get too involved in the tasks that are assigned to us and find very little or no time for stuff that matters outside assignments. Very few other industries, other than ours, have employees who are up to speed with the usage of the term ‘work life balance’ and how it affects them.
One lesson that we architects can pick up from this movie is to dream – dream big and pursue them. I have been asked this question a few times by different mentees – “What is the end goal for an architect’s career? Or If I pursue the career path of an architect, where will I be 10 years from now?” Let me take a stab at this question in context of this movie. The end goal of an architect’s career, or any other career for that matter, is to pursue a dream – something that makes you happy, something that sets you free.

For some people the dream is realized when they become their own boss, head the technology think tank of an organization or make it to the board of directors of a company. Yet, for some others, dreams are realized when they invent something, write a book, or teach something. It doesn’t matter what your dream is, as long as have one.
I believe in the saying – “Dreams are work in progress”. Make it grand, make it big and keep it close to your heart. Don’t forget to remind yourself regularly that whatever you are doing today is just a path to realize your dream; it is not the end game! To pursue anything worthwhile, you need to dream it first.

The end goal of a career path is when you have realized a few big dreams …

Posted by Guest Author at 06:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We just completed our 3rd annual survey on Enterprise Architecture. The survey brought out some very exciting findings, as well as some which we see as potential gaps or blue ocean. 

One of the key findings is that participants of the survey saw Enterprise Architecture as a capability that was core to their business and inherently part of their organization's crown jewels. However, given the daunting set of activities that most Enterprise Architecture functions have to execute today, the opportunity to work with ESPs and enlist them to execute some of these activities is real. In other words, some activities (the more tactical ones), can be outsourced to a strategic vendor partner.

Gartner has reiterated this in their research note (subscription required to view the note) this week.  It is comforting to see that they see the same conclusions from the data as we have - there are specific activities that one can engage ESPs on, but don't wholesale outsource the capability. 

We have engaged with multiple organizations to execute select EA activities in a collaborative model,  with the objective of ensuring that the EA function focuses on core activities such as business engagement, business alignment and strategic IT planning.

We are therefore seeing truly mature EA functions recognizing what is core vs context in their operating models and leveraging partners as necessary, to deliver even more business value cost effectively.

Posted by Sohel Aziz at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)