EA is a means to an end not an end in itself

In a lot of EA related forums and meetings the discussion boils down to the role of EA in an enterprise. I always use this quotation from none other than Einstein in such situations:

“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.”

In cognitive psychology, the term problem-solving refers to the mental process that people go through to discover, analyze and solve problems. This involves all of the steps in the problem process, including:

• the discovery of the problem
• the decision to tackle the issue
• understanding the problem
• researching the available options and taking actions to achieve your goals.

If the problem is misunderstood the attempts to resolve it would be equally futile. There are a couple of things that come to mind whenever one tries to solve a problem. Algorithms, Heuristics and Insight being in the forefront. EA by nature is not algorithmic. It’s more heuristic. If doesn’t solve problems itself but provides a means to discover, understand and highlight the problems.

What EA practices enable you to do is to describe the current architecture in views using artifacts which enables the stakeholders to understand the problem and then provides them with different alternatives to tackle it. That’s why EA does not have decision making authority but it is more in an advisory capacity. It is the knowledge repository which enhances and enables the capability of executives and stakeholders to make decisions and then measure their success based on some quantifiable outputs/metrics not to make decisions itself or to solve problems by default.