Erecting the Framework, Part III
John Zachman concludes his discussion of the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture and its impact in an exclusive interview
Interview by Dan Ruby
Posted March 18, 2004
John Zachman, founder of the discipline of enterprise architecture and the Zachman Framework (see Figure 1) is also a lecturer on advanced topics such as metaframeworks and federated architectures on behalf of his Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement (ZIFA)—see the sidebar, "What Is the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture?" Zachman was interviewed recently by Dan Ruby, FTP's Enterprise Group editorial director. In part I of the wide-ranging interview Zachman discussed the roots of enterprise architecture, the birth of the framework, and its evolution after his retirement. In part II of the interview, Zachman discussed his influences for developing the framework, how the framework compares with Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements, and his feelings about the framework's implementation in today's technologies. Here, the interview concludes with a discussion of the framework's implementation, its theoretical approach, and real-world enterprise architecture.
Implementing the Framework
EA: An EA Interest Group [EAIG] has recently formed to further advance understanding and usage of your framework. Can you comment on that?
Zachman: Until now, all the work on the Zachman Framework has happened in our spare time. Some of the other frameworks are supported by organizations with people who get paychecks to do that work. In contrast, nobody is paid to do the thinking around the Zachman Framework. The implication of the EAIG is that some people want to drive the state of the art, and make the process of enterprise engineering more of a science. That is the stated intent.
What does that mean? Well, we may want to do some laboratory experiments on the physics. What happens when you change this; how does it affect that? What does a metamodel look like? What are examples of all the cells? How do you rigorously define the graphic models? What kinds of tools are useful? There are a whole bunch of things that can be done, and you can probably speed up the development from what we have been able to do.
EA: So in terms of how enterprises are manufactured to use your term, it is still early on.
Zachman: I think the state of the art has to improve. It is like the Thomas Kuhn theory of the scientific revolution. At the point in time that an invention has to happen, it will probably happen. It is not a function of personality but a function of time. I think enterprise architecture is an idea whose time has come.
We know that we are in trouble on security. There's no way to fix it short of doing architectural work. All we need is a cataclysmic disaster or two; 9/11 got a lot of people's attention.
EA: And that fed interest in enterprise architecture?
Zachman: Look what it meant to the federal government. It made people ask what is in the enterprise and how do we integrate it. To put all these enterprises together [in the Department of Homeland Security], and put one person in charge, that does not fix the integration problem. Nothing magic is going to happen. At some point in time they will come to the stark realization that actual engineering work will have to be done if they want to integrate these things.
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