In a few recent posts (“The IIBA is teaming up…what does this mean to you?” and “Is the new IIBA alliance a trustworthy one?“) I discussed the alliances that the IIBA has formed.
I see now, that the IIBA, itself, has published information on the rationale behind these alliances.along with the key outcomes.
Essentially, they describe what we already expected. That the there is definitely a benefit to these partnerships. (See below for the link to their page).
One alliance that caused considerable discussion was the one with Sparx. There was concern that partnering with a commercial company would lead to a bias to this one vendor. It’s interesting to read that one of the key outcomes (of the alliance with Sparx) is
“The potential integration of BABOK® Guide v3 with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect (EA)“.
I’m curious what this will mean. What do you think?
Here’s the link to the IIBA page: http://www.iiba.org/mou/backgrounder.aspx
Alliances among standardizing bodies are desirable and welcome. They should make the vocabularies and specifications compact and mutually compatible through cross references and inclusion. Over time the core concepts and norms should be the same in all standards of one field, leaving only the special focus areas specific to each society distinct. At the same time the contents of special focus areas of different societies should be compatible and conflict-free.
Certainly, alliances between professional bodies (that establish norms and standards) and commercial enterprises (which make products based on the standards) are undesirable since they give unfair advantage to the selected commercial company against the others. As an alliance partner the selected commercial company would be in a position to know in advance the emerging proposals and manipulate and define standards in their favor. The commercial companies can definitely participate in the standardization process but that should be open, transparent and the same for all companies as vendors but NOT as deciding authority.
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