Posts by: Richard Veryard

Towards Next Practice EA

A few weeks ago, @Cybersal and I met with @snowded to talk about enterprise architecture. He showed us a graph of the Complex Space, whose two dimensions were Evidence and Consensus. Dave has since posted a version of this graph on his…

June 2013 Events

One seminar (free) and several workshops (pay). Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture and Systems Thinking (EAST) 14 June 2013, Central London The meeting is intended for experienced practitioners of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and/or Systems Thinking (ST), with an interest in the practical application…

Not your grandpa’s functional decomposition

Is there a difference between function and capability? You can find endless debate about this on the Internet (yawn). One of the reasons business architects often prefer the word capability is that the word function can become extremely overloaded - sometimes equivalent…

From information architecture to evidence-based practice

@bengoldacre has produced a report for the UK Department for Education, suggesting some lessons that education can learn from medicine, and calling for a coherent “information architecture” that supports evidence based practice. Dr Goldacre notes that in the highest performing education systems,…

Why information architecture needs systems thinking

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact,…

We Ought to Know the Difference

Is systems thinking really possible? Here's one reason why it might not be. One of the concerns of systems thinking is the need to avoid the so-called environmental fallacy - the blunder of ignoring or not understanding the effects of the environment…

Business Architecture and Related Domains

The following post is an extract from my draft eBook Business Architecture Viewpoints, available from @Leanpub There are some things I don't regard as part of the Business Architecture but as part of some other domain. One reason for these exclusions is…

Design Choice and Iteration

There are two misleading ideas (espoused theories) about how architects and designers make decisions. According to classical decision theory (Herbert Simon), one or more designers develops a series of alternative options, working collaboratively or in competition, and then the design team or…

Enterprise as a … System

Notwithstanding the earnest way some people use the phrase "enterprise-as-a-system", I don't see any great significance in regarding an enterprise or organization as a system. Indeed, given the very broad way people commonly use the word "system", it is difficult to think…

Multi-Sided Platform Strategies

A multi-sided platform business has the following characteristic features. 1. The platform serves two or more distinct categories of customer. For example, a credit card platform serves both cardholders and merchants. For example, a heterosexual dating agency serves both men and women.…

Three Notions of Maturity

Many enterprise architecture frameworks contain some notion of maturity, usually with some kind of nod in the direction of the SEI CMMI maturity model. I'm puzzled about this, because these notions of maturity don't much resemble the SEI's notion and sometimes have…

From Enabling Prejudices to Sedimented Principles

In my post From Sedimented Principles to Enabling Prejudices (March 2013)  I distinguished the category of design heuristics from other kinds of principle. Following Peter Rowe, I call these Enabling Prejudices. Rowe also uses the concept of Sedimented Principles, which he attributes…
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