Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Adrian Campbell I was recently asked what I thought was the difference between a Business Architect and a Business Analyst. Broadly speaking I see the difference as being similar to the difference between an Enterprise Architect and a Solution Architect. i.e. one works at a Strategic level across the whole enterprise and the other works at a project […]
I am currently involved with the EAST group (an outreach group of SCiO http://www.scio.org.uk/ ) which is looking at the overlap between Enterprise Architecture and System Thinking, and in particular the Viable System Model (VSM). The Viable System Model has been around for many years, coming out of Stafford Beer’s work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Stafford_Beer This diagram looks complex at […]
When establishing (or indeed re-establishing) a brand new Enterprise Architecture function within an organisation there are perhaps two main approaches: A big bang approach A gradual iterative incremental approach I favour the big bang approach. This is for several reasons: 1) a big bang send a clear and confident message to everyone in the organisation that […]
We are used to the idea of a Programme/Project Management Office (PMO) but often organisations fail to understand (or perhaps deliberately misunderstand) what the Enterprise Architecture function does. I propose that the Enterprise Architecture function is, in effect, an Office of the CEO, or an Office of the CEO and Strategic Change Management. The book […]
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 […]
How does an Enterprise Architecture and a Business Model work together? Successful organisations are those that improve and innovate their Business Models to find a profitable niche against their competitors. But a new Business Model alone is not enough. It needs to be implemented and executed. This is where an Enterprise Architecture comes in. If […]
I frequently find that there is much confusion about the modelling of Behaviour in an Enterprise Architecture model, specifically between the concepts of Business Capability, Business Function and Business Process. The various enterprise architecture glossaries all differ in their definition of these. For example the TOGAF ADM or ISEB definitions don’t help as much as […]
I was recently asked about the adoption trend of ArchiMate. I see demand for ArchiMate support slowly increasing in the UK, but it is nowhere near the tipping point that it has already reached in the Benelux area, especially in the Netherlands of course, where a requirement for enterprise architects to have Archimate experience is […]
Organisations need a new paradigm. In order to survive, old dogs are going to have to learn new tricks. They need to start fundamentally thinking about how to change the way in which they innovate, think and make decisions. To allow future operations to be more efficient, c-level executives and senior managers will need more accurate […]
There are still organisations that have not yet established an Enterprise Architecture function. A simplistic and immature view of the Enterprise Architecture function is that it is only used to create a target architecture model for the IS/IT architectures that enable the IS/IT Strategies, create IS/IT roadmaps, and generally act as a Technical Design Authority […]
Organisations always have an implicit architecture, but not always an explicit architecture. If they do have an explicit architecture, the chances are that it is an IT Architecture that has evolved over the course of hundreds of little decisions made by developers and project managers over the years. Perhaps these decisions have been made by […]
I have recently finished reading the book ‘Lost on Translation’ by Nigel Green and Carl Bate and found it a very useful and insightful. I recommend it for the shelf of any Enterprise Architect. See http://www.lithandbook.com/ The book describes the VPEC-T ‘thinking framework’ and a focus on understanding the Values, Policies, Events, Content and Trust perspectives […]