Dr Tim O’Neill

University of Technology

Sydney

Brad McCusker

Enterprise architect

IBM

MCCUSKER

Academics “seem” to have walked away from empirical research and left it all up to the IT vendors to talk performance and measurement. Why is this the case in IT?

O’NEILL

Yes I do agree that IT vendors seem to lead the way with “metrics”—27 percent ROI here and 45 millions of instructions per seconds there. Just remember that 95 percent of statistics are made up on the spot! All jokes aside, I don’t think this is a case of laziness or lack of desire, it’s one of pragmatics, or as I like to say “academic speed versus corporate speed versus media speed”. 

Academics work in a years-to-months timeframe, corporates work in a weeks-to-days timeframe and media works in a days-to-minutes timeframe (—no offence ed). In fields such as science/biotech we’re talking five to 10 years and $1 billion to take a drug to market so academic speed is tolerated, but IT is much more tactical with new fads/technologies almost monthly so only corporate speed can meet this. This is why in-house R&D (which in my view is much more D than R) tends to be the most common approach. Of course some institutions (like University of Technology Sydney) and some vendors (like IBM) are more strategic and applied in their research and hence this conversation.

O’NEILL

Enterprise architecture (EA) has had a lot of hype and organisations now regularly employ enterprise architects. Is the practice still riding on the “crest of the wave” or is it heading for a “dumping” against a rocky shore like so many hyped professions before it?

MCCUSKER

I think there is quite a bit of hype around the panacea of EA somewhat magically resolving the organisation’s dilemmas. However, often the only realistic way through managing complex systems is to dig deep and deal with the actual complexity. I’m not suggesting that EAs need to dive into every system an organisation has, otherwise they would get even less done. EAs preferably should have both a strong skill set in the design and operation of complex systems as well as strong conceptual and abstraction skills to “escape” from the detail. If over time EAs are able to demonstrate the ability to dive focused and narrow when required, but spend most of their time constructing EA migration programs with a two-10 year horizon, then there is a strong sustainable value proposition for this contribution.

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