Why You Can't Modify What You Have Not Done: Absurdity of Theoretical and Book-Learned Architects

There is something absurd happening in enterprise architecture and business architecture today, and it is time we called it out. People are passing multiple-choice exams… or cramming through a sixteen-hundred-page framework manual, and then being told, Now, go modify it.

Podcast
February 25, 2026
Ethan Shimones
Why You Can't Modify What You Have Not Done: Absurdity of Theoretical and Book-Learned Architects

There is something absurd happening in enterprise architecture and business architecture today, and it is time we called it out.

People are passing multiple-choice exams… or cramming through a sixteen-hundred-page framework manual, and then being told, Now, go modify it. Customize it for your organization.

Modify it? Before you have ever used it? Based on what? That is not mastery. That is madness.

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