You can ignore the "joints" of your organization when carving up your enterprise business processes and supporting applications. But it takes a lot more effort in the long run, both for the carver and for users consuming the results.
A note to the wary: When you carve poultry, it's already dead and it doesn't have much to say about the matter. In a living, breathing enterprise, there's going to be some kicking and screaming involved. The cookbooks remind us to have a very sharp knife and to bear down when cutting down through the joints. For enterprise architecture carving, that means you need the sharp knife of executive sponsorship -- and you can't be a chicken.
So, if you can stand the heat, I'll see you in the enterprise kitchen!
Melissa Cook is a management consultant and the author of Building Enterprise Information Architectures, published by Prentice-Hall. Previously, she was at Hewlett-Packard for 20 years. She can be reached at macookcorp@aol.com or through www.melissacook.com.