EA as a set of vectors.

This is kind of interesting: http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/07/ea-as-vectors.

I am sceptical of the need to introduce quantum physics into the equation. It immediately brings to mind Dawkins law of the conservation of difficulty: "Dawkins's Law of the Conservation of Difficulty states that obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. Theoretical physics is a genuinely difficult subject. Envious disciplines, ...conceal their lack of content behind billowing clouds of deliberate obscurity".

However I do think that it indicates some leading thinkers are starting to focus some key things I am focused on:

- complexity and the need to deal with it (http://ea-in-anz.blogspot.com/2007/11/need-to-manage-complexity-better-in.html)

- problems with the silo lense of a projects (http://ict-tech-and-industry.blogspot.com/2008/08/projects-are-artifical-constructs.html)

- organizations are reactionary (http://ea-in-anz.blogspot.com/2008/07/focus-on-ea-is-inversing-proportional.html)

What I am proposing are specific solutions and methods that address these issues and provide enterprises some key capabilities a way of:

- dealing with complexity and making behaviour less subject to natural reactionary influences (e.g. less subjects to the persuasive, but illogical, narrative of powerful individuals), by allowing concepts to be made explicit and related in what call the "democratization of transformation"

- providing a holistic view of transformations and a virtuous cycle of improving understanding e.g. by allowing all initiatives to be related to a view of the enteprise and feedback into that view - starting with all business cases and requirements being expressed in terms of a common shared view.

Enterprises do think in time frames. These timeframes may be referred to as states. They are not states in the sense that an object modeller thinks of the states of an object e.g. a switch "on" or "off". That are states in the sense of stages of progress in views of something at a point in time, recognising that a journy is in progress. I have said for a long time that the term "future state" with the definite article is illogical, there is not a single "future state" their are a continuum of states. This doesn't mean we shouldn't set targets for where we should be at points in time.

"... A project or whatever doesn’t change the organisation from ‘current state’ to ‘future state’: instead, it provides a vector that points towards a particular direction at a particular speed. The vector does sort-of imply a ‘future state’ at an arbitrarily-chosen future point in time, but that kind of frozen-time snapshot belies the dynamics of what’s actually going on. And vectors intersect: hence whilst a single vector may point to a ‘future state’, the interaction of all the vectors will inherently take the overall system someplace else."

[Many projects are influencing what things like look in at different points in time future]

"... The value of a “to-be” architecture is then primarily to help us understand the benefit being realized by the steps along the way. ..."

"... And EA needs to understand the complex interaction between many different changes. A typical enterprise is teeming with lots of different change initiatives, some of which may be formally constituted as "projects". ... these projects and other change initiatives interact (compose themselves) in usually unpredicted and possibly unpredictable ways. ...The ability of complex systems to preserve their identity and deep structure in the face of efforts to change them has been studied by many systems theorists..."

[Many projects are influencing things and we need to try and understand their net result and their interactions. We also need to recognise complex enterprise are intrinsically reactionary]

"... view modernization as a more holistic and multidimensional activity which plans and delivers a progressive transformation of the As-Is business through a series of maturity states on a number of (yes OK) vectors"

[We need a more holistic view]