Posts by: Nick Malik

Metamodel 101

I was just privy to a conversation about the value of creating a specific kind of metamodel, and it made me wonder… if I had to explain the concept of a metamodel to someone, how would I do it?  First, let’s start…

Segment Architecture in a Commercial Setting

The notion of an Enterprise Architect in a Segment (aka “Segment Architect”) has been fairly well described in for the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework.  (FSAM reference).  It is not always well understood, and there are a small number of blog posts that…

Myths of Microsoft Culture

From time to time, I hear interesting anecdotes from colleagues or friends outside Microsoft, telling me a story about what it’s like to work at Microsoft.  Often these stories are placed into a comparative context, as in: our culture is different than…

The ivory tower is a distant memory

Just reading through a LinkedIn thread on “the biggest problem facing Enterprise Architecture,” and I noticed one response that struck a chord.  Charles Wade stated the biggest problem as: “Practicality! We spend allot[sic] of time in the Ivory Tower of Ego and…

It’s not about cost savings… it’s about value

The word ‘value’ has too many meanings and sometimes it masks a real problem.  I had a conversation with a very smart customer recently, where their IT division is going through a transformation to help their business compete.  I asked if their…

The difference between selling EA and performing EA

Through a discussion on LinkedIn, I ran across a rather goofy blog post titled (“EA does not matter”), an obvious riff on Nick Carr’s famous HBR article.  Unfortunately, while Nick Carr is a well established business and IT contributor, the author of…

What is misalignment?

In order to solve a problem, you have to know the problem you are solving.  In a growing number of organizations, Enterprise Architecture is responsible for insuring the alignment of business change programs (including but not limited to programs that impact computing…

The Day that Star Trek Died

Twenty five years ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift off, killing seven astronauts.  But for me, that explosion over Cape Canaveral took away Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones, and all the other denizens of the United Federation of Planets. I…

In the white space between stakeholders

The more time I spend as an Enterprise Architect, the more I realize just how important this role is.  Yet, the stories that we tell fail to bring across that value.  Our metaphors (framework, capability, roadmap) are woefully inadequate to communicate the…
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