Workstream: Enterprise Architecture Professional Practice Guide (PPG)

I am concerned with the current trend to turn enterprise architecture into a formal engineering discipline to the exclusion of the more social and organisational aspects that, in my experience, tend to differentiate successful architects. While many EA's in large corporations find themselves either frustrated with lack of visible results or wallow in technical self-righteousness, those that really drive business change tend to use the language of technology (our mother tongue) to generate conversations involving all stakeholders and within which a joint narrative of the possibilities of a technology driven business emerge. Most crucially from a design standpoint, it is only from these organisational conversations that a real understanding of where change will come from, the rate at which it will occur and the impact it will have on the business may be achieved - rarely is it within the relatively narrow confines of a 'project'. Therefore EA is like a superstructure within which other architectural domains are contextualised - this too is a social construct rather than an engineering paradigm. The change agenda of every EA does not reduce the importance of the technical and the engineering - indeed every EA should have this depth - but its importance does mark out the EA as a distinct role player in the broader technology architecture domain. As someone who has driven a number of successful global initiatives that illustrate the pragmatism of this approach, and as the leader of a global architecture function where this approach is critical, I wish to share my experience and also learn from others with similar approaches.