Month: May 2013

One of the drivers for me to develop the content in my book “Stories that Move Mountains” was the development of many different ‘marketectures’ to help market the ideas in a new architecture. This idea resurfaced in a recent posting from Cutter.

http://blog.cutter.com/2013/04/09/marketects-delivering-good-enterprise-architecture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=marketects-delivering-good-enterprise-architecture​

Oracle Software Chief Thomas Kurian: 10 Strategic Cloud Computing Insights http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2013/05/08/oracle-software-chief-thomas-kurian-10-strategic-cloud-computing-insights/

Recently technology entrepreneur, lecturer and author Peter Hinssen delivered a keynote address at our annual worldwide conference. The premise of Mr. Hinssen’s presentation was based on his observation that we are beginning to embark on a new era where digital is just a ‘normality’.   Simply put, we have spent the last 25 years becoming digital and we are now entering an era where digitization and technology are expected to be part of our lives, at-home, at-work and on-the-go.

He went on to say, once in the new normal we have a zero tolerance for failure, but at the same time we realize things do not always have to be perfect.  He coined the phrase “good enough technology” and stated good enough technology will become acceptable in the work place.   Good enough technology does not mean we cut corners.  It means that as we become more technology aware in our work lives we would be happy with solutions that are say eighty-percent perfect on the quality scale.   Mr. Hinssen stated in the case of the enterprise if we take a look at the classical way we build and develop IT applications and systems we know it can take a long time to attain one hundred-percent quality.  If businesses would be happy to take IT applications and systems that are eighty-percent perfect on the quality scale IT departments could probably deliver twice as many systems and applications in the same amount of time. 

The difference between one hundred-percent and eighty-percent perfect on the quality scale is a dialogue with business – resulting in – good enough technology.   That’s where an Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM) approach can help.  By identifying the connection between business goals and strategies to the applications and technology spread across the enterprise, business leaders can make application and technology investment decisions based on facts rather than gut feel.  This helps enterprises better define what ‘good enough’ investments look like and helps prepare the business to move forward with new projects with greater speed and agility – two key ingredients for success in the era of the new normal.

Finally, Mr. Hinssen commented that if we look at the old normal and new normal together we can see that IT needs to evolve.  In the ‘old normal’ we used to design systems that were ‘built to last’, but in the new normal the pressures on IT are quite different.  We have to let IT evolve from the ‘built to last’ philosophy in the old normal to a ‘designed to change’ philosophy in the new normal.

Once again an EPM-centric approach can help with this evolution.  Using EPM decision making principles (making IT decisions in the context of the business) enterprise architects can design fluid architectures that allow business leaders to embrace the ‘design to change’ philosophy ushered in with the era of the new normal.  Using an EPM approach, enterprise architects can help decision makers design and deliver disruptive new services or create new business models that leverage the technologies that are powering the new IT economy.  Technologies such as cloud, virtualization and mobility are now the currency of the new normal.  Using an EPM approach enterprise architects can show business leaders how these technologies can play a more integral part in delivering success across enterprise much faster – and help them build a wining business in the era of the new normal.