CIO Magazine has an interesting article on the role of the enterprise architect, which highlights a number of aspects of EA which we call out in the book, including:

• The importance of communication and collaboration—in our opinion, the value of enterprise architecture is as much about process of getting to the “as is” and “to be” architecture as it is about those outputs. Enterprise architects should not just be exporting, as well as importing, information and insights.
• Enterprise architecture is a process—historically, too much emphasis has been placed on enterprise architecture outputs at the expense of the processes, policies and procedures that create those outputs.
• Enterprise architecture should focus on generating consensus—individual business groups are, quite rightly, focused on their own operations; enterprise architects should be looking across the organisation (and beyond its boundaries) to identify shared goals and objectives.
• Enterprise architects must balance short-terms needs with long-term strategic objectives—as the chief enterprise architect at Toyota Europe points out the enterprise architect “must understand the business strategy and translate this into an architectural approach (macro view), but he [sic] must also be able to work with individual projects and deliver very concrete guidance to these projects that focuses on the successful delivery of the individual project within that macro view“

The article (like our book) includes some valuable insight from practitioners and is worth a read. There’s also an interesting discussion on certification from the likes of the Open Group.