Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Ivo Velitchkov 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 […]
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, […]