2021-12-24 Friday - My reply to Adrian Grigoriu's analogy (EA models are like MRI scans)

Adrian Grigoriu posted the following on LinkedIn:

 Enterprise architecture looks (and is used) like an MRI scan
Architecture is about models and blueprints. In the Enterprise, the architects have to devise models that describe the enterprise. 
Enterprise Architecture looks (and is used) like an MRI scan.
On these models the people in the enterprise would visualize, analyse and solve their own issues in the enterprise context.  
The EA "model" looks like an MRI scan, an integrated set of views of the enterprise body, taken from different angles. Each view depicts a virtual section through the body of the enterprise.  
A wide variety of specialists (doctors) diagnose then, using the MRI pictures, the problems the same way business professionals analyse and solve the enterprise problems, using the EA descriptions produced by the architect.
The EA architect may be asked to assist the process but, just like the MRI specialist, the architect does not solve the problems of the enterprise but the specialist.

My reply:

Adrian Grigoriu I agree with Scott Whitmire's positions stated here, as well.

Further - due to the dynamic and constantly changing nature of the enterprise - models are usually imperfect, partial, and incomplete - in the best of times - and out-of-date most of the time.

The value of an architect spending the majority of their time primarily developing/maintaining models - eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. For those models, too, become technical debt.

A model may be useful as an approximation - as a "tell" on the trail for architects that follow. But, in my experience - across multiple industries - and over the last four decades - no executive has ever asked for an arch model, upon which to base a decision.

Models are useful to guide the direction and intent of design - or to reason about the big picture - but they are not the primary reason for the existence of an architect's role.

Models are just one of the ways in which an architect creates value.

In a fast moving, agile enterprise - my experience has been that executives value the architects' ability to help the organization avoid dead-ends, minefields, and to make recommendations (based on experience) - from imperfect/incomplete information.