Relevance of Enterprise Architecture

In my last post about IT and Enterprise Architectures, I received the feedback that 80% of Enterprise Architecture are Business related and only 20% are IT related. I spent some time to reflect about this statement and want to share the result.

First, take a look on the TOGAF content metamodel:

Effectively, if you relate the vertical extension or the number of boxes belonging to a category, the result is not exactly the 80/20 pattern, but close to it.

But, and that's my question, is this a relevant issue for an Enterprise Architect? Is this issue relevant to advise properly an enterprise on what to do to improve business?

It might be relevant, if you try to setup a new enterprise using TOGAF to establish a well done Enterprise Architecture right up from the beginning. I think this is not the typical use case for an Enterprise Architect. Most of us are working with existing companies and our task is to advise them on changes to be introduced in their Enterprise Architecture to achieve the goals they are pursuing.

In this case, the relevance of Enterprise Architecture (and of TOGAF) is that you can use them as a reference model and to do a benchmark comparing your company's enterprise architecture with this reference model. As a result you might get insights about where in your actual enterprise architecture do adjustments to achieve an improvement.

Doing relevant things is good for life and is good for business. Enterprise Architecture, TOGAF are relevant, but it depends on a thoughtful usage of those tools and frameworks:

At the end, and this is the conclusion of the reflection regarding the 20/80, having a deep knowledge in Enterprise Architecture and TOGAF is amazing, but as it is amazing, take care to spent time and money ONLY on relevant things.