Enterprise Architecture

Jeanne Ross & Peter Weill

Jeanne Ross & Peter Weill is known for Enterprise architecture as strategy; the operating model; IT governance and decision rights. **Thinkers:** Jeanne W. Ross and Peter Weill (MIT Center for Information Systems Research, MIT Sloan)

Built

Sources

Primary + secondary

Citations

ARGOS-tracked

FTS5 Chunks

Retrieval index

Councils

Memberships

Review Lens

Adversarial questions for candidates

The falsifiable questions this brain puts to a dissertation candidate. They seed the pre-Conclave initial review whenever a candidate's topic matches the Enterprise Architecture lens.

1
Operating model declaration. "Which of the four operating models (Diversification, Coordination, Replication, Unification) does your proposed governance/architecture assume for the space domain it addresses, and what evidence shows that domain actually *requires* that level of standardization and integration rather than a cheaper one?" *Falsifiable:* a candidate who cannot map the proposal to a quadrant, or who needs all four at once, fails F1.
2
Decision-rights specification. "For each decision domain your design touches (principles, architecture, infrastructure, application/mission need, investment), name who holds the decision right and who is accountable. Which Weill-Ross archetype is this — Monarchy, Federal, Duopoly, Anarchy — and where does the binding authority sit when a voluntary incentive (e.g., a sustainability rating) fails?" *Falsifiable:* if the answer is "voluntary coordination" with no specified decision right for the failure case, the governance claim is unfalsifiable and fails F4.
3
Foundation maturity / stage discipline. "Where on the maturity curve (Silos, Standardized Technology, Optimized Core, Modularity) does the current space domain sit, and does your proposal skip a stage — e.g., claiming agility or reuse before a standardized data foundation (a shared catalog, a common reference frame) actually exists?" *Falsifiable:* a design that assumes Business Modularity benefits over an un-standardized silo violates F3 and is rejected.
4
Engagement / alignment mechanism. "What is the engagement model that binds individual actors' local decisions (a launch, a maneuver, a data release) to the enterprise-level logic, and what concretely prevents a compliant-on-paper actor from silently violating the shared architecture?" *Falsifiable:* an architecture with no engagement mechanism is, by F5, a poster on a wall, and the claim of coordination is disconfirmed.
5
Integration-vs-autonomy trade is justified, not assumed. "You propose to integrate [data / catalogs / processes] across actors. Ross and Weill warn that integration has real costs and is not always worth it. Show the specific interdependence that makes integration necessary here, rather than a Replication or Diversification model — and quantify what is lost by *not* integrating." *Falsifiable:* if integration is asserted as self-evidently good with no interdependence argument, the candidate has not done the operating-model analysis and fails F1/F2.

Core Concepts & Space Translation

The Operating Model (integration x standardization)

The operating model is "the necessary level of business process integration and standardization for delivering goods and services to customers." It is a two-by-two: process *standardization* (do units run the same way?) on one axis, data *integration* (do units share data and customers?) on the other. The four quadrants are **Diversification** (low/low), **Coordination** (low standardization, high integration), **Replication** (high standardization, low integration), and **Unification** (high/high). A firm (or a domain) must pick one deliberately; picking none, or trying to be all four, is the root failure. Tied to Ross, Weill & Robertson, *Enterprise Architecture As Strategy*, Harvard Business School Press, 2006.

Space translation