Complexity / Structure

Principles and checklists

What is the role of principles in enterprise-architecture? What is a principle? For that matter, when is a principle not a principle? These were questions that came up in response to a post by Simplicable: ‘101 Principles of Enterprise-Architecture‘. Or rather, to…

Function, capability and affordance

What can our business-capabilities do? As our business-needs and business-context change, what options do we have to re-purpose and re-use those capabilities? These questions came up for me from a brief yet excellent LinkedIn thread on affordances. To me that thread seems to…

On chaos in enterprise-architecture

What is chaos? What does that word mean, in practice? And how – if at all – can we use chaos in enterprise-architecture? I’ve been having a great email back-and-forth on this with Cynthia Kurtz, co-originator of Cynefin, and – probably more relevant here – originator of the Confluence sensemaking-framework (CSF). As…

Metaframeworks in practice, Part 5: Enterprise Canvas

What frameworks do we need, to link across all domains and layers of the enterprise-architecture space? How can we create such frameworks? This is the fifth and final item in this series of worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice - on how to hack and…

Metaframeworks in practice, Part 4: Context-space mapping and SCAN

What generic base-frameworks or base-metaframeworks do we need, to support sensemaking and decision-making across the full scope of enterprise-architectures? How do we create those frameworks in real-world practice? This is the fourth of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice - on how to hack…

Metaframeworks in practice, Part 3: Five Elements

What frameworks do we need to make sense of relationships, interdependencies and dynamics across the the whole of an enterprise? This is the third of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice - on how to hack and ‘smoosh-together’ existing frameworks to create a tool…

Metaframeworks in practice, Part 2: Iterative-TOGAF

What methodology-frameworks do we need for broad-scope enterprise-architecture in a human-services government-department? This is the second of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice - on how to hack and ‘smoosh-together’ existing frameworks to create a tool that will help people make sense of a…

Metaframeworks in practice, Part 1: Extended-Zachman

What ontology-frameworks do we need, to make sense of the enterprise-architecture of a logistics-business? This is the first of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice – on how to hack and ‘smoosh-together’ existing frameworks to create appropriate tools to help people make…

Metaframeworks in practice: Introduction

If most of the frameworks we use in enterprise-architecture are ‘smooshed together’ from other frameworks, according to the needs of the context, then how do we do that ‘smooshing together’? More to the point, when and how and why should we do it…

Methods, mechanics, approaches

Why doesn’t ‘best-practice’ work as best-practice everywhere? And what is it that makes a skill a skill? For me, this one goes way back to work I did for my Masters degree, nigh on forty years ago. And to me, the answer…

Obliquity, serendipity and purpose

When everything is changing all around us, what is the role of purpose? And what is purpose, anyway? The starting-point for this one is a Tweet by someone I deeply respect, quoting someone I deeply don’t: RT @DavidGurteen: Obliquity and serendipity are more…

On human ‘applications’ in EA models

In enterprise-architecture, how should we model a human-based ‘application’ such as a customer-service line or reCaptcha or Amazon‘s ‘Mechanical Turk‘? [Note: on a first glance, this all looks really simple. As soon as we delve anywhere beneath the surface, though, it's definitely non-simple…
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