I had a lot of reaction around my post last week "Why Enterprise Architecture is a Corporate Responsibility." This is also the topic of my ZapFlash I wrote the week before. Mike Walker liked the post, and had a great follow up post here. I urge you to read it. "In summary this post does a great job at the overview of the issue. I do think that this is a very serious problem in the industry. There is no easy fix I had a lot of reaction around my post last week “Why Enterprise Architecture is a Corporate Responsibility.” This is also the topic of my ZapFlash I wrote the week before. Mike Walker liked the post, and had a great follow up post here. I urge you to read it. “In summary this post does a great job at the overview of the issue. I do think that this is a very serious problem in the industry. There is no easy fix to this. Enterprise Architecture alone will not save the day but does offer a compelling set of methodologies and frameworks to mitigate these risks as much as possible.” He expanded a lot on the notions I’m putting forth, including: “I have seen a great deal of this in the EA space and is a huge challenge. I hear these challenges from customers and from personal relationships in the industry. The trend here though is that EA is evolving from this Ivory Tower approach where EA’s are traffic cops making sure you are building the right systems to a more collaborative and self empowering governance model. The challenge with the political and budgetary is an issue as we move into matrix style organizations where separation of duties force logical separation of roles. As far as EA’s are concerned, this is addressed in two ways. First, there needs to be buy-in by CIO and there needs to be “Teeth” in the process. Secondly EA’s should have great people skills. I think it is good that EA’s do not have a budget it keeps the EA honest. To be clear, this issue is not to be taken lightly as it hinges on your business model, culture and organizational maturity, there is no easy fix here.” However, Dan Foody had a rather grumpy reaction in his recent blog post. “While I enjoy reading David’s writings, there were a few things in this article that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.” “To me this sounds very self defeatist – it’s an excuse someone uses when their SOA strategy fails: ‘The man never gave me what I needed to succeed.’ The reality is that you don’t need budgetary authority and you can create political clout (certainly no one can give you political authority – it’s not a transferable commodity).” Just to set things straight, it’s not “defeatist.” Were I going there I would say: You’re fat, and you’ll never get in shape. Instead, I’m saying: You’re fat, there is the treadmill, here is how you run, now get to work. There is a huge difference. The core issue is that EA is and was a neglected area in most enterprises, and needs to be fixed. So, go fix it. And, indeed, this has been a symptom of way too much focus on the short term tactical, and not enough on the long term strategic. I’m not advocating focusing only on the strategic; you have to create a balance. Right now we’re making a mess, and are not making plans to clean it up. Dan continues: “Just call me the Tony Robbins of SOA. :-)” No, you didn’t just say that! Software Development