Gartner is advocating a new approach to EA. Their new approach? Stop focusing on centralized control and move to a negotiated, decentralized approach.

In other words, Gartner feels that top-down, central architecture creation and enforcement isn’t sustainable. They want EA to switch to a cross-cutting concern, integrating organic architectures and approaches into a coherent architecture.

I couldn’t agree more.

The problem with traditional EA is that it strangles the business, impedes progress, increases costs and slows time to market. And I’ve never really seen the proposed benefits of a centralized approach actually take form.