EA Tools Matter - Just Not That Much!

Saturday, May 15, 2010 |

After spending some time critiquing new release from Troux Technologies, I received a lot of inquiries about other tools. Since SenseAgility has a vibrant Enterprise Architecture practice, I've dealt with a lot of these tools either through evaluation or implementation - perhaps even all of the ones listed in Gartner MQ and Forrester Wave. But we're not Gartner or Forrester - so the critique was from the point of whether the new improvements in Troux make our life easier - (and you can read below that they don't, and least not yet.)

Here are some of the queries I've received:

"What do you think about IBM's System Architect?"
"Why don't you like Alfabet's PlanningIT EA Tool? Is there something better?"

The answer is simple - every single one of these tools work. Whether they will be successful in your environment is another question, and one that analysts won't be able to answer during your 30 minute call. And the single greatest determinant of success is not whether it's IBM, or Alfabet, or Troux, or any other vendor.  They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and they all have their own meta-models. They all have widgets, whether Flex or .NET based, and they all have standard reports to delight most technical architects.

Those are important, but not as important as whether your EA group has an Architecture Blueprint Method that's been agreed upon by all of their stakeholders - a way to consistently model overall system architecture at all levels of OSI stack, from network through application.  If your EA group has one, then it is more likely that EA tool implementation will yield a positive ROI (project success can never be taken for granted.)  If your organization does not have an ABM in place, don't worry about which tool to purchase. Investing in any of them will likely result in a waste of time and treasure.

AAB

0 comments: