Enterprise Architecture continues to grow as a job title, but what does it mean to transition from just a title, to an actual profession? The Center for Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession (CAEAP) published a position paper Enterprise Architecture: A Professional Practice Guide that provides some ideas.
First, you might ask "What makes something a profession?" Andrew Abbott's book The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor describes four forces that lead something to become a profession:
- The definition of the linkage between a profession and its (recognized) area of work; its jurisdiction. Abbott argues that this is the central focus for development of a profession; a profession's jurisdiction must be defined and agreed, most often through competition among organizations that seek to represent the profession.
- The external events that led to the initial jurisdictional boundaries, and how continuing events have forced changes in jurisdiction.
- The internal events that occurred and caused changes; how competition among groups took place, the results.
- The level of abstraction found in the knowledge domain (or jurisdiction) of the profession. Too high a level leads to boundaries that cannot be defended; insufficient abstraction leaves practitioners vulnerable to objective task change—the work becomes common-place or obsolete.
An argument can be made that those forces currently affect Enterprise Architecture.
In addition, Abbot says that professions are composed of three interlinking parts: the discipline, which defines the forward and academic view of the field; the practice, which defines experiential and agreed upon practices; and the profession, which provide a consistent view of the field and the expectations of the members from an external point of view. The CAEAP paper goes into great detail on these three areas, with a focus on their position that a 'profession' has the following attributes:
- There is a statement of ethics on how the profession is responsible to society.
- There is a sanctioning body that has the ability to remove professional status from those who transgress professional standards.
- The profession tests members for competency.
- Professions maintain their link to the advanced (academic) knowledge within their industry.
- The people within the profession have unique expertise that cannot be found outside the profession.
The obvious questions raised by these attributes are: Does IT architecture need to be an official profession? How does EA benefit from conforming to these attributes? Is EA ready to become a profession?
To examine these, let's look at some other "professions"? Doctors and lawyers are good examples of activities that can't be practiced without the license and credential of a professional. I'd say this has been mostly a good thing. On the other hand, architects and engineers (perhaps closer to IT) both offer professional credentials, but a license and certification is not needed to do most of the work, just the final, legal sign off. Becoming a Professional Engineer or Architect is difficult, but brings with it prestige, responsibility, and hopefully salary. Often, an architecture, or engineering firm will have only one or two certified professionals. Since the professional is putting their name (and license) on the line when they sign off on something, they are well motivated to make sure everything has been done according to specification. We'd like to believe that this leads to better and safer buildings, roads, bridges, etc.
IT in general, and architecture in particular, requires no licenses, and offers very few certifications. Would IT projects be better off if some level of certification were available? Should a professional certification be required to work in the profession (like a doctor)? Or, should a professional at least be required to sign off on things (like an engineer)? Would you perform your job any better if you were required to be certified? Would certification force employers to meet educational requirements, or would they look for labor elsewhere? Would this work in the world of IT? Would it produce better systems?
Having given this some thought, I have to say that I don't really know. It's hard to imagine that worst systems would be produced, but at the same time, I'm not sure that professional certification is the best or right solution either. Would it help or impede innovation? Would Agile methods ever have been developed in such an environment? Hasn't competition been good for the advancement of EA?
Many people are thinking about certification (professional or otherwise) to help make sense of the rapidly evolving field of IT architecture, and that this addresses real issues that we need to face. I'd love to hear your opinions on this matter, and if you have strong opinions, you might consider getting involved in one of these industry efforts.