Emergent architecture: yak-yak and yawn?

Friday, August 14, 2009 by admin

As is so often the case, I came to Gartner’s exposition of “emergent architecture” through reading a post from the excellent Todd Biske. As my co-authors on “The Technology Garden” will still remember, I’m a real bore when it comes to EA and its role and I’m a sucker for getting involved in EA conversations…

Unfortunately MWD isn’t a Gartner client so I can’t read any of the research that might sit behind this press release or attend one of the upcoming EA conferences where we’re promised that all this will be explored in more detail – I have to rely on the release. And to be fair, it could be that it’s the influence of Gartner’s PR department that has mangled what could be an inoffensive set of observations.

But – come on!  “Emergent architecture”? “Emergent” implies that Gartner is saying that architecture “just kind of happens”, based on a set of rules and the actions of a large number of independent actors. The only thing that’s “emergent” in IT in that context would be a complete car-crash. Accidental non-architecture.

The release is filled with academese – it looks like it’s been written to make it appear really really well-researched and authoritative. “Non-deterministic”. “Autonomous actors”. “Rule-bound actors”. “Goal oriented actors”. Is Gartner fixing to set up its own University perhaps? (Sorry, but this kind of thing really gets my goat).

But the biggest problem I have with this is not the language – it’s the sheer “duh” factor. This might be a set of inoffensive observations, but does that really justify a news release and a conference? Gartner positions this set of ideas (once you get past the academese) as new thinking – but in fact the principles under discussion have been at the heart of successful attempts to improve IT-business alignment through Enterprise Architecture for years.

In modern businesses EA cannot be top-down, it cannot represent “the department of ‘No’”, it cannot be autocratic, it cannot be theoretical – otherwise EA staff will get given an office and encouraged to stay there, creating intricate models and watching angels dance on the heads of pins until they next  get called to the dispensing counter to take their meds. We’ve known this for some time now.

If you’re of similar mind, you might want to read these:

Todd Biske: The Future of EA
Mike Rollings (Burton Group): Gartner wakes out of an EA induced coma…
Todd Biske: What are your EA services?
Steve Jones: Enterprise Architecture – a tool not a destination
MWD: Real-world Enterprise Architecture part I: journey vs destination (May 2007)
MWD: Real-world Enterprise Architecture part II: conversation, federation, road trips and tools (May 2007)
MWD: Businesses aren’t machines, and enterprise architecture can’t make them so (July 2008)

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