Fake and Real Tools for Enterprise Architecture Svyatoslav Kotusev August 2019 Enterprise Architecture Professional Journal (EAPJ) 1 Fake and Real Tools for Enterprise Architecture: The Zachman Framework and Business Capability Model Svyatoslav Kotusev (kotusev@kotusev.com) Enterprise Architecture Professional Journal (EAPJ), August 2019 This article represents an extended and updated version of the earlier article published in April 2018 by the British Computer Society (BCS): http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/59399 Abstract The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) is teeming with numerous tools intended to help architects do their work, e.g. various frameworks, modeling languages and other techniques. Some of these tools are famous, positioned as central to the EA discipline, promoted as global standards and widely taught in various courses, but in reality they are essentially useless for all practical purposes (fake tools). At the same time, other tools actually work in practice and are broadly adopted in industry, but they are scarcely discussed in mainstream EA publications and lacking systematic descriptions (real tools). Moreover, these fake and real toolsets for enterprise architecture barely overlap with each other. In order to illustrate the current paradoxical situation in the EA discipline, this article discusses in detail one celebrated fake tool (the Zachman Framework) and one prominent real tool (the Business Capability Model), analyzes the sharp contrast between them and explains the implications of this duplicity for the EA profession. Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Zachman Framework, Business Capability Model, Management Fads, Best Practices. Introduction The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) is closely associated with numerous tools including various frameworks, approaches, techniques and modeling notations intended to help architects plan organizations and their information systems. However, for a very long time we have been observing a rather curious situation which can be characterized as absurd, paradoxical or even schizophrenic. In particular, one set of tools is declared as fundamental to the EA discipline, consistently promoted as global EA standards and widely taught in various EA courses, but in reality these tools are largely, if not totally, useless for all practical purposes. At the same time, other set of tools constitutes the actual body of established EA best practices that work in organizations, but these tools are barely discussed and lacking sensible descriptions for newbie architects and students to learn from. Moreover, the set of famous EA tools and the set of useful EA tools barely overlap with each other. The existence of these two disparate toolsets should be very clearly understood and acknowledged by the EA community for the normal progression and further professionalization of the EA discipline [1]. In order to illustrate the critical difference and sharp contrast between these toolsets, below I will discuss in detail two notable tools for enterprise architecture representing arguably the most extreme opposite examples of fake and real tools: the Zachman Framework as a prominent fake tool and the Business Capability Model as a prominent real tool.