I attended an interesting and thought provoking training course last week run by PEAF’s founder Kevin Smith.
PEAF’s mantra is “cutting EA to the bone” – with a focus on:
- filling the gap between minimal EA frameworks that do not provide guidance on how ‘to do’ EA and those that are difficult to use/understand.
- looking at all areas of the enterprise – not just IT/technical areas.
During the week two core concepts particularly resonated with me:
- “Enterprise debt” – the debt incurred by organisations when projects do not comply with core architecutural principles. This particularly hit home as I have blogged previously about a related concept – ‘data quality debt’.
- “Yes, but….”. The role of an architect is to help an organisation make better informed decisions. An architect should provide information on the implications of a particular idea/project, and if required, ensure that senior management are aware of these. An architect’s role is not to act as a gatekeeper – to say “Yes, but….” rather than ”No”
If you are starting to look into EA or evaluating different frameworks then it is defnitely worth taking a look at what PEAF can offer.
Posted by Michael Baylon 
