Meeting Mr Zachman

Meeting Mr Zachman

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr John Zachman at the 2017 ICMG ANZ & Asia Pacific Enterprise Architecture Summit held in Sydney on the 13th and 14th of July. John Zachman is an Enterprise Architecture pioneer in the field of Information Science and is known internationally for the “Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture”. In simple terms, the Zachman Framework provides an enterprise ontology for diagnosing enterprise problems and prescribing solutions. It does this by classifying the elements of an enterprise, much like the Periodic Table of Elements in the fields of Physics and Chemistry. Mr Zachman’s approach has parallels with ancient Greek philosophy during which time an ontological characterisation of the fundamental nature of reality was proposed by the ancient Greeks. A methodology such as TOGAF, on the other hand, is the process for producing architectural artifacts. Ontology and methodology go together in Information Science as they do in Chemistry, without ontology you end up with alchemy! I was most impressed by Mr Zachman’s passion for his framework, which he believes is fundamental to understanding how enterprises work, which I agree with after my many years of consulting to large enterprises. More details about the Zachman Framework can be found at www.zachman.com.