Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Ivo Velitchkov This is in response to the recent article of Richard Veryard “Arguing with Mendeleev”. There he comments on Zachman’s comparison of his framework with the periodic table of Mendeleev. And indeed there are cells in both tables with labelled columns (called “groups” in Mendeleev’s) and rows (“periods” respectively). Another similarity is that both deal with […]
In the Australian Aboriginal culture, Dreamtime “is a complex network of knowledge, faith, and practices”. Both the word and thus cited definition invite vivid associations. The latter, with what is commonly referred to as Enterprise Architecture (EA), the former – with its current state. Note: With this I’d like to depart from further analogies as […]
HR Manager: What do you do? DB Designer: I work with databases. HR Manager: More specifically? DB Designer: I design them. HR Manager: Good, so you are an Architect! DB Designer: Well, yes you can put it that way, I guess. HR Manager: Who uses the databases you design? DB Designer: Many departments, in fact […]
Hashtags work. At least on Twitter. People sacrifice precious characters to tag their tweets. Why they work? They are emergent*. Nobody owns them. And they have the fate they deserve. A tagged micro-post becomes immediately a member of the set of all micro-posts having this tag. The main function is to direct the tweets to […]
Definitions are attention-seekers. And good ones. They get much more attention than they deserve. I’ve just read a post by Nick Malik called Many (flawed) Definitions of Business Architecture. There he does a very good job of analysing the existing definitions of Business Architecture. He comes to the conclusion that all of them need to […]
Beliefs are powerful. Sometimes, to achieve something, all we need is to hold on to our beliefs. Then there are times when we can’t get where we want to be, unless our beliefs are seriously shaken and eventually changed. Beliefs can influence our capabilities. And the evidence of our capabilities can change our beliefs. Let’s […]
A conversation with Eddy Vanderlinden Semantic technologies have been some temptation for me for quite a long time. That was mainly due to my growing frustration about the utilisation of data resources both inside corporations and outside, on the Internet. Then all mainstream modelling methods used for analysis or for database design and application development, […]
The previous part focused on areas such as expressive power, readability and enterprise architecture. This one, written jointly with Roland Woldt, dwells on a few more aspects such as semi-structured processes, exceptions, loops and data handling. Some of them could be sorted well under the ‘expressive power’ heading but as stated in the previous post, […]
There were several posts and discussions on the topic of “BPMN vs. EPC”. One of them is quite comprehensive and its discussion thread very interesting. But there are still many important points untouched and I’d like to share some of them for those facing a choice of business process notation. That doesn’t mean that there […]
The Developer: “Let’s start coding. We don’t have time for solution design.” The Designer: “No, we should design first. It’s not a waste of time. It will reduce rework.” The Analyst: “Guys, please! How to start designing, if we don’t know what is the problem to be solved?” The Tool-lover: “But how to diagnose the […]
Some organisations, after straggling to implement Balanced Scorecard Systems (BSC), come to the conclusion that they need to at least map their processes. But then the challenge they face is how to link strategic with process KPIs. Others are practising some sort of BPM but have difficulties demonstrating its contribution to the bottom line. As […]
The CEO was referred to as ‘the architect of the enterprise’ long before ‘Enterprise Architecture’ was coined. The ‘architect’ metaphor was used in 60s and 70s and became quite present in the strategy management literature of the early 80s. And really, big part of the job of C-level executives is to manage (different domains of) […]