James McGovern drops science on the real role of an useful EA:
Understand why you are doing enterprise architecture in the first place. It is not to create comprehensive documentation, fill out Zachman frameworks, achieve higher levels of CMM, etc but to enable the strategic intent of the business that employs you. You must understand why whatever you are promoting is needed and why it is your customer's priority.
Exactly. Mapping strategy to action is the way forward. Wonkiness for wonkiness sake is not.
Make sure that your recommendations and estimates are thoughtful, complete, ethical and as accurate as possible. Don't just reflect ideals, you must reflect reality.
When architecture lives only on paper, it is a dead architecture; when architecture lives in code and config files in production systems, then the architect has created a living system.
This is an important lesson for security architects as well as EA. There is a great scene in the movie "Awakenings" when Robin Williams, the persistent researcher turned doctor is fervently seeking a cure for his patients, he goes to a lecture by a researcher and hears how L-Dopa may help his chronic patients. He confronts the researcher in the bathroom after the lecture, and says "Does this drug really work?"
The researcher seems surprised by the question, and says,"I am a chemist, I will leave it to you doctor, to do the damage." This kind of passing the buck goes on all the time in security. "I designed a 'secure' system, not my problem if you cannot implement it."...is simply not good enough in security architecture anymore. We have a lot of security stuff, we can use to create higher assurance systems today.
Kruchten's Tao of the Software Architect says:
A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets her intuition
lead her wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed herself of concepts
and keeps her mind open to what is.
Thus the architect is available to everyone
and rejects no one.
She is ready to use all situations
and does not waste anything.
This is called embodying the light. (27)
Holistic thinking = good. You can either complain about your constraints, or factor them in and come up with a design that deals with them.
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