Monday, October 1, 2012

How Enterprise Architecture is like Yoga

Firstly let me say that I hope people with more knowledge of yoga than me will excuse this analogy.  I am a great fan of yoga, but my knowledge is very limited and my application even more limited.

I see EA as having parallels with Yoga. 


Frameworks - I see some of the frameworks a bit like Yoga sutras of Patanjali.  There are great  principles but knowing exactly how to apply those principles in different circumstances is non-trivial. To answer for example - exactly what I should do etc. this afternoon, tomorrow, next week etc. For the average lazy westerner this just makes it too hard and what they want is someone who can interpret the framework and tell them do this.


I am also told Guru Pattabhi Jois had a saying that yoga "is 99% practice, 1% theory". I also think this is true of many aspects of EA. EA's however like the theory of business more than they like the practice of it.