When Casimir Artmann posted a blog post about the role of Enterprise Architecture in a world that changes ever faster, some of the comments were about “IT” not being mature like other disciplines with a distinct “engineering” and “science” branch such as Chemistry or Biology – and even that is a muddled area. Of course, not being mature could also mean “not having matured“. Here is what I responded on a non-public forum (Yammer):
There are not two, rather at least 5 different disciplines in our world:
- Computer Science
- Computer Engineering (I would include Network Engineering)
- Information Technology (or ICT even)
- Information Science
- Software Engineering
On top of that, I would include areas like:
- Scientific Computing
- User Experience
(Is Enterprise Architecture a discipline of its own or part of one of the above?)
Is there not enough science in our area? Surely there is plenty of science but the problem is that there is not enough exchange between practioners and researchers. I try to help out by keeping not one foot in each camp but at least a few toes. Current research project is on success factors in software engineering.
And that is my next point, it is not really the challenge of eg formalisms, complexity calculations etc that are holding us back. 99% of what we do is “old” stuff which any time travelling software professional from 40-50 years ago could handle.
The challenge today is people, teams, processes, customer and vendor relations. All of that needs to be in place in order to ensure an optimal result and that is where we need to evolve more. And why do we need that? Because change is the only constant.
Image sources
- A city landscape: Lin Liang Yu via Flickr | CC BY NC ND 2.0
