Douglas T. Erickson - Erickson Methodology for Enterprise Architecture: How to Achieve a 21St Century Enterprise Architecture Services Capability.

ERICKSON METHODOLOGY
FOR
ENTERPRISE
ARCHITECTURE

VOLUME 1

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE THAT:

Achieves Enterprise Alignment, Integration,

Flexibility, and Responsiveness,

Dramatically Reduces Costs!

How to Achieve a

21 st Century Enterprise Architecture
Services Capability.

Written by

DOUGLAS T. ERICKSON

With Donald B. Phillips

Forward by John A. Zachman

ERICKSON METHODOLOGY FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

HOW TO ACHIEVE A 21ST CENTURY ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE SERVICES CAPABILITY.

Copyright 2020 Douglas T. Erickson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written
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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9994-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9996-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9995-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020914814

iUniverse rev. date: 12/17/2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I dedicate this book to my parents, Lawrence and Agnes Erickson. They exemplified, to me, what parents should be and do. They set the example of how to be a person who could be courageous, respected as a person, and who had value to others. I am profoundly glad that I am their son! However, I am still striving to meet their example!

My special recognition of Catherine Banning for sharing her life, and sustaining and abiding me through my effort to write this book. Along the way she taught me something about love and appreciation for another.

Doug Erickson

To my wife, Diann, for her patience and understanding for enduring those times I was away on projects - for calling her on our anniversary while I was having dinner with Doug many miles away.

Don Phillips

It is my opinion that the methodology used on this project to define and understand explicitly (to the excruciating level of detail) the business processes and needs, and then to develop a system that meets those needs has been successful. From a data integrity perspective, having each piece of information identified by date/time, stored only once, and used as required exceeded our expectations.

Based on our experience this combination of methodology, tools, and skills should be the platinum standard employed on all future projects since it produces an exceptional level of quality and efficiency.

Willian Darlage, CPCU, Director, Actuarial Department, Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation referring to results achieved using the Erickson Methodology for Enterprise Architecture.

I have known Douglas T. Erickson almost before he became known as Doug Erickson! It was probably about 1980 when we first met. Sometime in 1980, I was traveling through Phoenix, Arizona. I called Doug from the airport about 4:30 in the afternoon and asked him if I could come to his office for a discussion on an idea I had. He said he would wait for me at his office. Little did he know, nor I, that that conversation would last until after 1:00 AM the next morning. I did not have prepared architecture material at the time, but I had the initial concept in mind.

During that extended discussion, I drew the rudiments of what would eventually become the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture on his whiteboard. Of course, it did not take me seven to eight hours to draw my idea on Dougs whiteboard, but the exchange of ideas was productive, encouraging, and time-consuming. After all of these years, that conversation continues.

At that time, Doug was the Manager, Data Management for Motorola Government Electronics Group, working for Carl Simcox, the Director, Management Systems.

Doug, and one of his direct reports, John Kuzmic, was beginning to build relational data models. However, Doug was also in a position to apply some of the architecture concepts he and I had discussed.

In 1980, a decision was made to redevelop an existing system.

Doug and John convinced Carl to require the programming folks to use the normalized data that Doug and John had defined in the logical data model.

The systems development staff, managed by Joe Burda, to say the least, was not enthused! It is impossible! The system performance will be unacceptable, and it will take more time since we have never done this before! Besides, we dont even have a Relational DBMS!

I dont know exactly what Carl did or said, or what exactly changed peoples minds, but knowing Carl, he encouraged his staff to listen to and consider the possibilities. Within a couple of weeks, Joe Burda, with the recommendation of the Project Manager, Dale Whitmarsh, agreed to proceed as Doug was proposing.

The implemented systems performed better than anything they had done before, and the project was completed on schedule and under budget!

Sometimes the stars do align just right!

Carl ultimately went on to become the Director, Telecommunications for Motorola Inc. in Chicago, and Doug became the author of the Erickson Methodology for Enterprise Architecture.

In fact, Doug shatters a number of IT shibboleths in the book, including why you should design databases, one-for-one identical to the normalized logical data models, AVOIDING DE-NORMALIZATION FOR PERFORMANCE REASONS a common, misguided myth in IT!

I sketched out the early versions of my framework around 1980, wrote the original article in 82, published internally in IBM in 84, and in the IBM Systems Journal in 1987.

Any of you who might read this book may well have heard me talk about Enterprise Architecture and know that I ALWAYS say that I did not invent my framework (the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture). I saw the pattern in Buildings (the older discipline of Architecture and Construction) and Industrial Products (the older discipline of Engineering and Manufacturing). I changed the names to be enterprise names rather than Building or Industrial Product Names.

Doug began his Motorola life in Logistics and really knew Engineering and Manufacturing. He was infinitely helpful to me for understanding the Engineering/Manufacturing pattern and its correlation with enterprise Engineering and Manufacturing. In fact, many times, I say that I learned everything I know from Doug Erickson but Doug says that he learned everything he knows from me! In fact, he quotes me extensively in the book, which I humbly and immensely appreciate.

Whats important is what we learned, not who learned from whom. I was learning and validating the conceptual, ontological classification structure for all the facts that exist and that are relevant to the existence of the enterprise. Doug was learning his methodological formalism for populating my ontological structure with actual enterprise descriptive representations. Clearly, it was mutually beneficial and has resulted in a lengthy and continuing association and discussion.