Introduction: When Things Just Work

Abstract

A well-known commercial from the automobile industry uses the slogan: Isn’t it nice, when things just work? Doesn’t this slogan also apply to the IT support of your business processes, the alignment of your IT infrastructure and applications development to the strategies and goals of your enterprise? Isn’t it nice, when IT does exactly what it is supposed to do — and that cost-effectively, smoothly, and elegantly? My proposition is that this is exactly what the mysterious creatures known as IT architects are there to accomplish with their enterprise architecture (EA), i.e. to simply make sure that things work the way they are supposed to, the way the clients, system operators, and users like. I suppose this might elicit some protest on the part of IT professionals. After all, the clients, system operators, customers, and users do not always succeed in making their wishes clear.