Architecture

The “Right” Representation of the EA Value Cycle

In the world of Enterprise Architecture, we are still creating “shared” understanding of how to tell our stakeholders what we do.  There is no consistency in our diagrams or our descriptions just yet.  This post will discuss the different ways we present…

How to Become a Hero for Growth

One thing that happens when you work to develop change across an organization: you detect the “cultural” elements of an organization that often go unnoticed by the people involved.  Just as a “Fish discovers water last,” people working in a cultural context…

Usability is Not an Architecture Quality Attribute

The architecture of an application is often evaluated by assessing its quality attributes; things like performance, security, maintainability  and availability. One topic that often surfaces is whether Usability should be considered an architecture quality attribute. No one would dispute the importance of usability…

Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent Architect

Johnny Carson once claimed that his favorite joke went like this: Imagine the African Savanna in late August. In what was a large lake, but is now a relatively small mud-pool sits two hippos. They are submerged to their eyeballs, which appear…

AGILE architecture vs. agile ARCHITECTURE

As an architect involved in an agile implementation (my current gig), you can imagine how interested I was to see that there’s a new book on Agile Architecture, and perhaps how disappointed I was to see that it focused on SOA and…

A Science of Enterprise Architecture? Really?

I've seen quite a few discussions over the last couple of years about whether enterprise architecture (EA) is amenable to disciplined, rigorous methods - sometimes described as a scientific approach. A lot of what I've seen strikes me as anything but scientific.

How Do You Measure Up?

One of my life-long idols, Muhammad Ali is quoted as saying, “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” Can you point to a specific situation where you…

The “Answer” Is Always 42

Douglas Adams, for those who may possibly not be aware of him, was an English author best known for his The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series of books (originally a radio show).

T’was but an Ounce of a Moment.

Did you know that terms like “Fortnight” and “Ounce” indicate units of time? Furthermore, did you know that seemingly ambiguous terms like “Moment” have actual measurable, concrete definitions? Did you also know that finding arcane facts is a necessary skill when collecting…
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