Last week we visited "real-world architects" and of course we discussed the subject on similarities and differences between a real-world architects and an Enterprise Architects. There are some equalities to see in there such as thinking in concepts and principles. The main differentiator is in the in the visualization/conceptualization of the physic world. For centuries we are constructing houses and buildings, so everyone can understand the overall concept of buildings (foundation, walls, doors, electricity, water, etc). So if an architect should draw a building with the public entrance on the 3th level, everyone can comprehend that this will not work. In a case of an enterprise architect outlining a new system, the visualization is not so obvious (or does someone know a good way for visualizing new systems in operation?). Therefore conceptual flaws in an overall architecture are not so clearly visible.
Another interesting aspect was the budget the building architect used relative to the total cost of a project. They estimated that this was 1-3% of the total project cost. In enterprise architecture this part is much larger than 3% (sometimes up to 10-20% ?). In my opinion this can lead to two distinct possible conclusions: 1) Enterprise architecture is very expensive and inefficient; or 2)building enterprise systems is much more efficient than building real-world buildings. I come to think that the second option is the most probable, because in a housing project the engineers have to build/construct everything from the ground up for each new project (foundation, walls, installing electricity and water, etc). In a software project all the infrastructural components can be reused, such as servers, network connections, databases and software components. Therefore these projects can accelerate upon the already installed infrastructure (which is the product of a solid architecture). As a result of the fast development of the system, we as Enterprise Architects use relatively a lot of time in the initial phases of an project. But is this because Enterprise architect are inefficient or the result of the leverage of the "stable, but flexible infrastructure"?
