EA

Organisational Design Anti Pattern: Headcount Justifying the Manager

A feudalism Anti Pattern?   This Anti Pattern attracts controversy. It is potentially incendiary, and presents itself during analysis of business architecture, particularly organisational design and efficiency. Anti Pattern Name [Headcount Justifying the Manager.] Type: [Managerial, Organisational.] Problem: [Organisational Structure may have…

Buy the Book: The Fractal Organization

The Fractal Organization: Creating Sustainable Organizations with the Viable System Model [source: Amazon] I was having a very interesting discussion with Nigel Green @taotwit about a week or so back, one topic that came to the fore was the Viable System Model…

Policy Enforcement Point Pattern

Figure 1 – Policy Enforcement Point Pattern [source: Steve Nimmons] Scenario: End-user requests access to an application / service. Request is routed through a Policy Enforcement Point. Policy Enforcement Point transfers the request details to a Policy Decision Point for evaluation and…

The Ivory Tower Anti Pattern

Office of the First and Deputy-first Architects Ivory Towers are created by intellectual elitism, over-specialisation and condescension. The Ivory Tower Anti Pattern is a trap for the idealist, perfectionist and the aloof. Elegance, sophistication and aesthetics are not substitutes for architectural realism.…

The Dangers of Reification Fallacy

The model is not the economy A Reification Fallacy occurs when something abstract is treated as if it were real. The ‘evidence speaks for itself’, ‘nature knows best’, are examples of Reification Fallacies. Reification itself is not (necessarily) problematic (contrast reification and…

Could Anyone Else Use an Extra $600,000?

I am supplementing my Q&A series on the Value of EA & BPA with a wonderful article published on January 30th about one our customers, Chubb Insurance, written by Madeline Weiss, Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council. There is nothing like…

CIO Agenda: Big Data Ecosystems

Figure 1: A (simplified) Big Data Ecosystem [source: Steve Nimmons]   In terms of ‘forces’ affecting the CIO Agenda, Information Strategy and Enterprise Architecture, Big Data is increasingly important. This is due to explosive growth in number of data source types: applications,…

Exploring the fit between VPEC-T and Enterprise Architecture

VPEC-T Enterprise Architecture Mind Map (click to enlarge) [source: Steve Nimmons] VPEC-T is a Systems Thinking framework with 5 dimensions (Values, Policy, Events, Content and Trust). VPEC-T is useful in the context of Enterprise Architecture, particularly in terms of exploring the full…

VPEC-T as a Kettle Logic Trap

“It was a sewing machine when I borrowed it.” Kettle Logic is a type of informal fallacy in which multiple arguments are used to defend a point, but the arguments themselves are inconsistent. Kettle Logic takes its name from a story related…

Anti Pattern: Process Fixation

The Process Fixation Anti Pattern   This is a common Anti Pattern, and in the world of Enterprise Architecture is a bedfellow of ‘Framework Abuse’. Certain Enterprise Architects become fixated with process, convincing themselves that meticulous implementation of every conceivable aspect and…

Measure Structural Capital to show EA value

What is the total value of your organization’s assets? The accountants keep track on all physical assets and the financial assets, but the field of measuring intangible assets is still emerging. Intangible assets are all the resources within the organization that does not…

Q&A Series: The Evolution of EA

Next up in my Q&A series on EA, I am going to address how the EA market is changing and what vendors are doing to support user’s new expectations. Question: What are some of the ways that EA is evolving and what…
5 of 13
123456789