Using railways as a metaphor for necessityof enterprise architecture.

As I post yesterday we present our work to the IT workers today. We’ve got good feedbacks and request to join the working groups so I assume the presentation was quit a success. The idea of letting group members to present the group decisions appear to be good idea, the audience listen carefully to their co-workers and react.

In my speech I use a metaphor to emphasize the necessity of enterprise architecture. I choose to use railways as the metaphor and it prove itself. I brought two whiteboard and place them in both sides of the screen. Then I ask for two volunteers and asked them to architect and paint railways that should be connected, but they don’t allowed communicating one with each other (I bet the outcome was the same even if I allowed them to communicate). Naturally, every one of the volunteers paints the railways in a different way. Then we place the two whiteboards side by side to see how the information train should move form one system (railway) to other system (railway). Well, as the two architects paint the railway the information train went out of the railways … the metaphor is clear: without architecture that set standards and blueprints every one might do amazing architecture job but the train cant move from one railway to another. The same goes for IT systems…