EA Tool or No-Tool? Buy or Build?

Within Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM), we often see posts on choices such as:

• No tool or Tool?
• Modelling or Management?
• to Buy or to Build?
• Low-Code or No-Code?
• Etc.

It is always interesting to address things as black and white, and it makes us start thinking: what about grey-zones? why not a balance? isn’t EA just about the right balance?

When looking at the practice and tooling of EA in general, we see a big divide between modelling and management, however, even if we ignore this separation, it no longer makes sense to talk about the need to have a tool. The EA practice is simply so evolved over the last decade that a much more coherent view of modern EA has been established – it is apparent you do need a tool. We may, however, discuss Buy or Build?

And this also reflects the clash between a generation of “former” tools (most are still within the EA quadrant) where architects were supposed to do stuff, even though almost any other architect in similar position in another company would have to learn and do the same within such an EA tool. I often refer to these tools as “case tools”, as these tools are enormously rich in features and functionality, they can allow you to build a shop of dinosaurs, a record-collection app, and equally an EA app – it just takes time to make it work, make it look good, make it easy to use, perform well on web, and provide decision support.

And the main challenge/advantage of this decade of tools remain the same, those who are good to tweak the tool are not necessarily the same as those who are good at UI; and those who are good at UI are not necessarily the best for knowing the practices. So, this type of tool requires a team contribution, a strong EA team that work together with practice and supplementing skills to drive outcomes. This is not a task for a young-hire from university on his/her own!

However, with the right team and the right tool, this choice will generate the most awesome solutions in market space; these are the pioneers when working well; they are the front figures for the next generation of solutions to be inspired by. However, most people starting in EA happen not to have such a situation – they they will have a hard time to climb the staircase to success, impact, and adoption.

The new generation of tools, predominantly outside the EA quadrant (!) are simpler, web-based, model-driven, and much more supporting the common use-cases out-of-the-box! This takes away the difficulty of EA, you no longer need to define and build your EA app from a “case-tool”, you have it right in front of you as a web service as the practice of EA has been captured as “commodity” and now becomes out of the box.

This new generation of EA tool is a clearly a “build” by vendor, “buy” by consumer, but with an enormously rich set of options that allow each customer to adopt it differently. It is what J.W.Ross et all (MIT CISR; “Let your digital strategy evolve”) refer to as “information-enriched solutions that engage customers in a seamless, personalized experience”; something that live in the intersection of what “customers want and what is possible”. Not every customer will know this, but catalysing ideas from more sources with a vendor-based development approach, we can offer new digital ways to conduct EA practice. This is what we apply with Next-Insight.

To summarize this turning point where EA becomes commodity. The practice around how we deal with SAFE, how we deal with capabilities and value streams, how we deal with applications portfolio, data quality etc. that is something you can buy out-of-the-box today. If you happen to be in a special field where it differs significantly, try to consider a case-tool with a strong team, but for majority, try to consider the quick path up the stairs, that is what we can help you with. Summarising the three stages: