The Enterprise Architecture Matters Blog Chapter III

This is the third instalement of the collection of blogs on Enterprise Architecture (EA) I posted since the beginning of 2007. But Enterprise Architecture (EA) has made little progress since its beginnings though. In fact, even though the EA body of knowledge, training and certifications grew significantly, the popular EA methods proved to be ineffective.

Yet, new paradigms emerge as we speak to challenge the status quo. Business Capabilities, Design Thinking, Business Design, Design Sprint, the Digital Twin of the Organisation, Bimodal and Two Speed IT, DevOps, Agile... are all adding their bits to the enterprise picture. Yet, they have not solved the key EA issue, the Modelling of the Enterprise.
The book, after recapping the EA state, methods, management and governance, the architects' mission and skills, roadblocks ... elaborates on the Enterprise Modelling.
Since the primary goal of EA is to model the Enterprise, the book suggests an enterprise design method with Off-the-Shelf Business Capabilities as a Service which are Business Capabilities offered Off-The-Shelf on the market .


To cover the entire enterprise, business capabilities must be all first delineated on the same reference Business Architecture, take for instance the generic GODS Business Architecture, essentially an extension to the Value Chain. At this stage though you may define your own capabilities taking into account both your business architecture and technology landscape and your organisation. Each capability could be then realised by your technology and organisation.

Alternatively a capability can be built by a 3rd party out of technology and/or people and supplied as an outsourced service to more enterprises.


In time, suppliers may join their offers to provide a seamless integration of the capability offers in the reference business architecture. The Enterprise Architect or the Entrepreneur, as the designer of a Startup, just have to select the capabilities offered by the market to realise their enterprise. An Enterprise Broker could offer the integrated capabilities as an Enterprise Capability as a Service.