Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Ivo Velitchkov That is what several people asked me in the last few weeks. I have even made one quick attempt to answer but then I realised that the topic deserves more clarification. While I have a lot of sympathy for those that object to ‘Best Practice’ as a name – even more – to those that object […]
The division of labour has been the main principle for structuring organisations in the last two centuries. That is still the dominant approach for allocating resources, information and power in companies and public institutions. The new dynamics in a connected world have revealed a rich spectrum of problems related with these structures ranging from ineffective coordination to […]
Let’s start with roles. ‘Role’ comes from ‘roll’, as it was on a paper roll where the actor part was written. It is about something prescribed and then performed. But it evolved from roles that were performed as prescribed, through those that were not, to performing roles that had not been prescribed at all. Roles […]
That was the topic of a talk I gave in October last year at an Enterprise Architecture event in London. These are the slides, or most of them, anyway. They probably don’t tell the story by themselves and I’m not going to help them here unless this post provokes a discussion. What I’ll do instead […]
These are part of the frames from the projects-flavour of the “Essential Balances” theme, delivered in a workshop format at a training event yesterday in Athens. Tweet This Post
I’ve been arguing repeatedly that trying to get the Viable System Model from overviews, introductions and writings based on or about it, can put the curious mind in a state of confusion or simply lead to wrong interpretations. The absolute minimum is reading at least once each of the three books explaining the model. But […]
The “slides” supporting my talk on Requisite Inefficiency a couple of months ago have been on Slideshare since then but I haven’t had the time to share them here. Which I do now. The various manifestations of Requisite Inefficiency in both organisms and organisations can be understood by observing the maintenance of balances between homeostasis […]
Can you deal with it? It is amazing how language evolved to adapt to reductionist mindset. “Deal”, which originated from divide and initially meant only to distribute and then to trade, is now used as synonym for cope, manage and control. We manage things by dividing them. We eat elephants peace by peace, we start […]
The cybernetic concept of variety is enjoying some increase in usage. And that’s both in frequency and in number of different contexts. Even typing “Ross Ashby” in Google Trends supports that impression. In the last two years the interest seems stable, while in the previous six – non-existing, save for the lonely peak in May […]
Let’s have a variable V representing at this moment an aspect of interest I from the behaviour of a system S. This variable W is changed through transduction of a certain characteristic C of S using a transducer T. Now, which variable are we talking about, V or W? Probably Z? It would be V […]
Was it Lisbon that attracted me so much or the word Cybernetics in the sub-title or the promise of Alberto Manuel that it would be a different BPM conference? May be all three and more. As it happened, the conference was very well organised and indeed different in a nice way. The charm of Lisbon […]
In his latest article Ancient Wisdom teaches Business Processes, Keith Swenson reflects on an interesting story told by Jared Diamond. In short, the potato farmers in Peru used to scatter their strips of land. They kept them that way instead of amalgamating them which would seem like the most reasonable thing to do. This turned […]