First, Happy Holidays….
Just a quick shout-out to all of my readers, colleagues, and friends in the hope that the holiday season is treating your families and you very well! 🙂
Month: December 2010
Kudos to Cambridge for refusing to cover up security holes in “Chip and PIN”
One challenge with long-running news stories is that it is often difficult to keep track of the “current” bits. Even important news can seem like “old” news because the problem is taking so long to be resolved, or even addressed. Wh…
Where is the information when we need it?
We boarded the plane, settled down in our seats, to await pushback from the gate – the usual ‘hurry up and wait’ of everyday air-travel. Seemed to take a bit longer than usual, though. Strange clonks and thumps from beneath my seat, down below in the cargo bay. We wait, and we wait.
[I won’t name […]
Value of Enterprise Architecture
One of the fundamental questions of Enterprise Architecture is how to measure the value of the enterprise architecture program. Then again is Enterprise Architecture a program or a business function, I my opinion it can be both. I have investigated how Enterprise Architecture contribute to the enterprise with value but also how the value can […]
Enterprise Architecture and the Lessons of History
I am an Enterprise Architect. It is my job to look at things the way they are, and envision the things that should be. It is my role to describe specific actions that specific people can take to change things (systems, processes, corporate …
Business Architecture Anti-Pattern: The Nature of the Inventory Viewpoint
The Portfolio Viewpoint is a collection of well-defined capabilities and their relationships across a set of domains. The Portfolio Viewpoint supports executive level discussions and business strategy because it traces stakeholder (CEO, CIO, COO, CISO)…
Business Architecture Anti-Pattern: The Nature of the Inventory Viewpoint
The Portfolio Viewpoint is a collection of well-defined capabilities and their relationships across a set of domains. The Portfolio Viewpoint supports executive level discussions and business strategy because it traces stakeholder (CEO, CIO, COO, CISO) vision to decision grade information for IT investment.
But the Portfolio View usually doesn’t start out that way.
It frequently begins life as an Inventory Viewpoint that has little value outside of Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture teams. Some attributes of the Inventory Viewpoint are as follows:
As you can see the level of order is much higher and therefore of greater value in the Portfolio Viewpoint and while there are probably other attributes one can add to the mix the table above identifies some important ones.
The danger with the Inventory Viewpoint is that if it is maintained in the same condition long term then it becomes an anti-pattern. Collecting capabilities without understanding the depth of their connections and the wealth of their meaning will end up as shelf-ware in a repository, however sophisticated that repository may feel.
So resist the temptation to hoard capabilities. Don’t be afraid to talk to the business. And, above all, pay attention to what your stakeholders and their deputies tell you, particularly the office of the CEO, CIO, COO, and CISO.
Business Architecture Anti-Pattern: The Nature of the Inventory Viewpoint
The Portfolio Viewpoint is a collection of well-defined capabilities and their relationships across a set of domains. The Portfolio Viewpoint supports executive level discussions and business strategy because it traces stakeholder (CEO, CIO, COO, CISO) vision to decision grade information for IT investment.
But the Portfolio View usually doesn’t start out that way.
It frequently begins life as an Inventory Viewpoint that has little value outside of Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture teams. Some attributes of the Inventory Viewpoint are as follows:
As you can see the level of order is much higher and therefore of greater value in the Portfolio Viewpoint and while there are probably other attributes one can add to the mix the table above identifies some important ones.
The danger with the Inventory Viewpoint is that if it is maintained in the same condition long term then it becomes an anti-pattern. Collecting capabilities without understanding the depth of their connections and the wealth of their meaning will end up as shelf-ware in a repository, however sophisticated that repository may feel.
So resist the temptation to hoard capabilities. Don’t be afraid to talk to the business. And, above all, pay attention to what your stakeholders and their deputies tell you, particularly the office of the CEO, CIO, COO, and CISO.
Business Architecture Anti-Pattern: The Nature of the Inventory Viewpoint
The Portfolio Viewpoint is a collection of well-defined capabilities and their relationships across a set of domains. The Portfolio Viewpoint supports executive level discussions and business strategy because it traces stakeholder (CEO, CIO, COO, CISO)…
Perfect Arch :: Our journey and inspirations so far
Together with my colleagues Andre Kampert and Sergej van Middendorp, I am part of a new consulting practice named PerfectArch. All three of us are independent consultants, and having worked and collaborated with each other on assignments in the past, we wanted to formalize our collaboration as a brand. We had some ideas about the […]
IT Wastelands :: How many icebergs have you melted?
High performance servers, cheap network storage, faster network connections, and improved peripheral performance have become subtle contributors for a culture of IT waste. System designers are increasingly relieved of the burden of designing efficient systems that utilize resources conservatively, and can easily fall back on platitudes like “just add more hardware”. A system designer may […]
Making Strategy Work with Enterprise Architecture
If you want to execute a business strategy then you’ll need an Enterprise Architecture function. Enterprise architecture (EA) is about change – strategic change in an enterprise. But not exogenous change – reactive change forced on the enterprise by outside exigencies – although that sort of change and those external forces may be taken into […]