Why do you need Enterprise Architecture management? Based on the definition you find on the portal, you may know - or not. This article is for two kinds of people as the people has two different kinds: one understands why enterprise architecture and the other does not. Those who understands may find some good analogy to describe the necessity of EA, while the others would make sense of the essence. First of all, remember: EA is not a must!

Yes, it looks weird on an EA portal to say that EA is not a must, but it really isn't. The reason is that EA is not producing applications, does not play with the processes directly neither operates the infrastructure. The good analogy for Enterprise Architecture is the civic design. Let's see the tale of civic design about Rulefort and Cheaperville, two theoretical little town. One has a well-operated Board of Housing and the other has not.

Long time ago people originally like to move to Cheaperville, since the building sites were sold on low price, there was no painful bureaucracy, they can build houses as they wish on the places they like the best on their site. At the same time those people who selected Rulefort to build their home paid much higher prices for the sites and had to go through some not-so-loved red tape processes at the Board of Houses.

As the time was passing some utilities should be developed. All houses wanted to get water, electricity, wastewater services and so. Cheaperville solved that as they use to. Everyone had a good idea for himself: some sprang wells, others found natural spring and build some pipe to share that water and so. Some houses got windmills, other had small house plants and half of the town had an electrical network with a central plant.

Same needs came up in Rulefort since people heard about modern utilities. They were slower, since they Urbanism office created plans of central services, prepared quality standards, invested into backbones of that networks and so. Cheaperville started to feel bored about their utilities when Rulefort finished their investments and they thought, people in Rulefort are so slow and bureaucratic. As the time was going other investments came up: bitumen covered roads, public transport, internet, cable TV and so.

The more developments rise the more problem came up in Cheaperville. There was no simple way of paving the roads since no one knows where the utilities are. No interoperability between electricity solutions, therefore internet and cable providers cannot build their network using standard components. Yes, they recognised it is worthwhile to have utility providers instead of house-grown solutions, but the transformations are still not finished although they run for long-long years. We would say nothing about school, kindergarden, waste handling, malls, etc. 

Spend some words about maintenance issues: Rulefort has linear asset management for their backbones with appropriate maintenance plans with countable downtimes, while people in Cheaperville are either not understanding these words. Otherwise Cheaperville has a name for road construction caused traffic jams, continuous service outages, bad service quality ...

Today, Cheaperville citizens are still proud of their freedom but in the darkroom, they are trying to apply the suggestions of Broken windows theory. They plan to move to Rulefort, but the value of their properties is not enough to buy a small garden there.

The citizens in Rulefort learned the lesson: the real freedom is made by the right strict principles!

If Rulefort and Cheaperville would be enterprises, Rulefort has Enterprise Architecture Management and Cheaperville has not...

EA is not a must, but gives you the power to be Rulefort instead of Cheaperville. It is your decision.