Thursday, July 28, 2011

Enterprise Architects - With apologies to Buffy Sainte-Marie

In her great song - Universal Soldier (sung here by Donovan), Buffy Sainte-Marie describes an impossible ideal for a soldier. Sometimes I think we enterprise architects have to have a similar set of impossible and conflicting attributes. We have to be (as discussed in other posts) archivists and activists), but then we also have to be good listeners (not a common trait among activists), understand the business in totality and yet have a reasonable (whatever that is) understanding of the technology that powers it. We have to be agents of change, and stewards of stability. We have to understand the patterns of interactions and their implications. We have to understand systems concepts (systems of record/systems of reference) and we have to understand the financials. We have to understand some of the legal implications of our decisions and we have to understand risk. We have to understand how to negotiate and when to strongarm.

All in all quite a difficult and conflicting set of characteristics

1 comments:

Unknown said...


Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts.
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