I saw Mark Mylod’s movie “The Menu” last week, a rich movie that has many layers satirizing the art scene and the different personas that practically ruin art in the current age we are living in. Each persona is analyzed and eventually penalized towards the end of the movie. As an enterprise architect, I have always seen enterprise architecture as more of an art form than a field of engineering, and I couldn’t help but draw parallels to what I have observed architecting for the many customers I dealt with throughout my career.
So first why do I believe Enterprise Architecture is an form of art?
I’ve always drawn my architecture inspiration from one of the more renowned designers “Dieter Rams” as Braun’s key designer his designs are so ubiquitous that every living human must have interacted with something he designed or influenced (Apple was heavily “inspired” by his work). Dieter Rams has listed 10 principles of good design that I believe carry through quite nicely into Enterprise Architecture.
Enterprise architecture is an art form in that it requires a high level of creativity and strategic thinking. It involves designing the overall structure and operation of a business or organization, including the systems, processes, and technologies that support it. This involves considering the long-term vision and goals of the organization, as well as the current and future needs of its stakeholders. Enterprise architects must be aware of the butterfly effect, the concept that small changes can have large, cascading consequences. They must be able to envision and plan for the future, while also being able to adapt and pivot as the business landscape changes. It requires a deep understanding of the organization’s industry, as well as an ability to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions to complex problems. In short, enterprise architecture is an art form because it requires the ability to combine technical expertise with creative thinking and strategic planning, while also considering the potential impacts of small changes, in order to design and evolve the enterprise to meet the needs of the business and its stakeholders.
More importantly often the outcome of the EA decision can’t be perceived before many years have passed and even then the outcome of the decision might be hard to observe, The impact however of all these decisions are what makes or breaks an enterprise. A good EA practice is a value multiplier that maximizes the return of investment of tech spend.
So on to “The Menu” and I hope you’ve seen the movie as I’m going to map the personas seen in it with the personas we often as EAs encounter.
The Pretentious Food Critics (Lilian & Ted) : The Big 4 Consultants
Throughout the movie, Lilian spends more time talking about the food than actually enjoying it. She nitpicks and finds reasons why this or that dish is not good, and when she likes a dish, her over-the-top analysis takes away any pleasure that the dish might have had to begin with. In a way, the movie suggests that food critics exist to criticize and that they do so by robbing actual consumers of the ability to think for themselves, turning the experience of eating into an exhausting mental task. Having the ability to ruin a restaurant (and having done it several times) the chefs need to appease her rather than their actual customers.
If you’ve been an EA long enough, you may have encountered a situation in which a consultancy was hired to “assist you” by conducting an Enterprise Architecture assessment. Often, the consultants who conduct these assessments are quite young and have limited experience actually building systems, but they have a lot of experience “critiquing” other people’s work. They may nitpick issues and justify the value of their presence by highlighting potential issues they perceive in the design. The resulting report can have negative consequences for the EA practice within an organization and its overall EA strategy.
Warren Buffet is said to have commented on the need for consultancies with the quote, “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.“
Anne and Richard – The VIP Account Executives
Anne and Richard are obviously quite wealthy and have visited Hawthorn (the restaurant) 11 times in two years, yet they were unable to name a single dish they had there when asked. They come to the restaurant because they can afford to, even if they don’t particularly care about the amazing food. For them, the food has no magic; it’s just normal food that they can afford, and it’s as interesting to them as a tuna sandwich. The movie uses them to represent art collectors who care less about the art itself and more about hoarding wealth.
This type of persona represents some people I encountered while consulting VIP accounts on their EA. As VIP accounts, they’ve seen it all and can afford to hire as many EAs and consultancies as they’d like. The effort that you put into carefully crafting an architectural vision masterpiece, with hundreds of hours spent considering everything, often ends up locked in a drawer along with all the other similar masterpieces they’ve accumulated over the years. They order it, pay for it, and then decide not to use it or even not to read it.
The Movie Star – The Very Senior Architecture (who knows nothing)
Now this was a bit hard to map, In the movie he is a washed up movie star who tries to re-experience some of his long gone fame by name dropping and frequenting high end restaurants. Not having the pallet or taste for “artsy” food he is doing it just to be seen there. He can’t comprehend the complexities of the dishes being served nor he cares about them.
The closest approximation was the very senior EA who has spent years and years in the same company, having very little progress or exposure to the outside world, he can’t understand more advanced architectures nor he cares to learn about them, he is happy with his current point to point integrations (they work right?) and wouldn’t want to do anything about them, having been around for so long he becomes part of the architecture rather than its designer. He possess the experience (within his own company), the white hair and often the respect of his organization, yet he does more damage by staying caught in the past than anybody realizes.
This type is often the hardest to deal, He doesn’t use the expression “back in my days we used to …” because in his mind we are still living them. He’d resist, sabotage or undermine any attempt done to modernize the now obsolete architecture.
Soren, Bryce, and Dave – The business
As the movie begins, we see that these three guys work directly with the owner of the restaurant and expect special treatment due to their positions. They are loud, uninterested in the food, and more concerned with wielding their power. Despite being young and lacking sophistication, they hold their titles in high regard and use them to exert their authority rather than for any other reason. It seems that the movie is using these characters as a metaphor for studio executives who hold significant power over art, but for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t appear that they truly care about the food or the restaurant.
In the EA world they represent the business (whomever that is). More times than I’d care to count as an EA I received none sensical requests from “the business” requests that would break the architecture, have serious implications on the future of the technology we are using or both. However being “the business” they expect their demands to be met, leveraging their title and their ability to claim serious revenue losses if their absurd demands aren’t followed, they also have a significant role at the budget you might or might not get next year. It got so bad in one of the companies I worked in we had a special designation for it in our technical debt log.
Tyler – The Fan Boy
Tyler was willing to go to great lengths to eat at the Hawthorn restaurant. He is overly fascinated by everything on the menu, even when he is served an empty plate. He is a die-hard fan, a true representation of what it means to be a fanatic. Nothing can sway his admiration for the Hawthorn. When put on the spot in the kitchen, however, he fails to produce anything of substance, despite having spent months or even years learning about the restaurant’s cooking techniques.
We have all encountered fanboys like this before – people who see every problem as a nail that can be pounded with their particular hammer. Whether it’s a specific cloud service, technology, or architecture, they try to use it in every situation they encounter. I have seen people attempt to do this with DDD, event-driven architecture, blockchain, AWS, and my favorite Microservices.
The movie is quite good, I highly recommend watching it if you haven’t already as it critiques how we art is gradually losing that magical think that makes it art as more and more people treat it as everything else other than art. The movie might be about a restaurant but it is much much deeper than that.