Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Kai Schlüter In my last post I have started a series about Power, Process, Project and People. In this post I like to reflect a bit on power and what I am doing with respect to power in my daily Enterprise Architecture life. Just to repeat the definition from the O…
In my last post I have started a series about Power, Process, Project and People. In this post I like to reflect a bit on power and what I am doing with respect to power in my daily Enterprise Architecture life. Just to repeat the definition from the O…
In the past days I have seen plenty of interesting posts putting various concepts in the focus. One caught my attention and is very much worth to read:
RT @davidsprott: The shape of the next generation EA framework. t.co/dolaKQtb #CIO #ecosystem #services #entarch
— Tom Graves (@tetradian) 18. Februar 2013
This post followed some back and forth twittering and it was a very enjoyable discussion. It triggered some thinking I wanted to reflect already for a while, because every now and then I see an interesting tendency to market something as the one and only way on how to look at the world or solutions, be it IT or non IT.
Coming back to people I want to reflect on three forces especially which I observe every day and what I do to work with them or what I see in the typical Enterprise Architecture approaches. The three forces are (for each one definition from Oxford Dictionaries):
The definition of process and project is sometimes confusing if compared, so for simplification I typically differentiate by using project in the context of unique deliveries and process if the deliveries are repeatable. These three forces have a different effect on people, and each and every person has a different opinion what type of force he prefers, but in typical organizations all three forces exist in co-existence and influence each other. The key to all these three powers in the end is the People though and interesting enough they get quite often forgotten.
This is only the first post in a series, otherwise it is getting too long. The next post will be about power. If you have any input to give straight away then I am happy to read or hear from you.
In the past days I have seen plenty of interesting posts putting various concepts in the focus. One caught my attention and is very much worth to read:
RT @davidsprott: The shape of the next generation EA framework. t.co/dolaKQtb #CIO #ecosystem #services #entarch
— Tom Graves (@tetradian) 18. Februar 2013
This post followed some back and forth twittering and it was a very enjoyable discussion. It triggered some thinking I wanted to reflect already for a while, because every now and then I see an interesting tendency to market something as the one and only way on how to look at the world or solutions, be it IT or non IT.
Coming back to people I want to reflect on three forces especially which I observe every day and what I do to work with them or what I see in the typical Enterprise Architecture approaches. The three forces are (for each one definition from Oxford Dictionaries):
The definition of process and project is sometimes confusing if compared, so for simplification I typically differentiate by using project in the context of unique deliveries and process if the deliveries are repeatable. These three forces have a different effect on people, and each and every person has a different opinion what type of force he prefers, but in typical organizations all three forces exist in co-existence and influence each other. The key to all these three powers in the end is the People though and interesting enough they get quite often forgotten.
This is only the first post in a series, otherwise it is getting too long. The next post will be about power. If you have any input to give straight away then I am happy to read or hear from you.
In my last post “Details vs Context” I have touched the challenge to find the right balance between getting lost in the details and getting lost in the context. The frequent readers of my blog should by now know that my personal take on Enterprise Arch…
In my last post “Details vs Context” I have touched the challenge to find the right balance between getting lost in the details and getting lost in the context. The frequent readers of my blog should by now know that my personal take on Enterprise Arch…
In my last post I was writing about walking the talking, which is based on my experience one of the key elements for success. Some time ago I have written about the need to remember the larger context which is also reflected in my WISE SCAN post (E sta…
In my last post I was writing about walking the talking, which is based on my experience one of the key elements for success. Some time ago I have written about the need to remember the larger context which is also reflected in my WISE SCAN post (E sta…
My last posts have been very much focused and following a red line, so now I am trying to pick up some loose ends. There is one thing which bugs me quite often when I am doing Enterprise Architecture work. There is way to much focus on talking about Enterprise Architecture. Something which is also reflected by following twitter post:
I suspect that the primary job role of Enterprise Architects is to argue with other EAs about what #entarch is. Prove me wrong, people.
— Kevin Brennan (@bakevin) 7. Februar 2013
My personal observation is that Architects actually discuss about Enterprise Architecture, but do in most cases not argue. This is a differentiation I find very important, because an argumentation chain would at least provide a red line why one approach is chosen over the other. By looking at the pure amount of frameworks and tools in the market and the amount of new players entering that space it is quite obvious that Enterprise Architecture is at the moment in a hype or fever situation. This can easily lead to total irrational decisions. On this topic I recommend to take a closer look at the Tulip Mania, some of the behaviours might also be seen in more recent crises.
Here (as mentioned before) I use GLUE as mapping tool for me. The real most interesting (and relevant) question for me always is: Where is a person stuck in the GLUE circulatory system.
And then I try to go into that position, placing myself onto the seat of that particular person to understand where the missing links are. If I manage to understand a portion of it I try to show the traces by using whatever terminology is approbiate for that particular person. Not GLUE, not a specific framework, but whatever language element helps. Sometimes indirect communication by others is the only way to succeed, sometimes I need to play over time. Invest today, harvest in a couple of month when a small trigger has grown into something powerful.
In most cases showing the connections to other information streams (in the circulatory system) allows the person at hand to see some possible answers to concrete problems which have not been solveable before. And there is one thing I know, then it is that I do not know anything, but what I know is that I am an Enterprise Architect. So in most cases I have literally no chance to give a correct concrete answer even though I am fairly often asked to give one, but I am able to help the information flow, to unblock the thinking, to link elements. There is my focus and that enables others to bring their great knowledge to the game and solve problems I would not have dreamt of being solved.
My last posts have been very much focused and following a red line, so now I am trying to pick up some loose ends. There is one thing which bugs me quite often when I am doing Enterprise Architecture work. There is way to much focus on talking about Enterprise Architecture. Something which is also reflected by following twitter post:
I suspect that the primary job role of Enterprise Architects is to argue with other EAs about what #entarch is. Prove me wrong, people.
— Kevin Brennan (@bakevin) 7. Februar 2013
My personal observation is that Architects actually discuss about Enterprise Architecture, but do in most cases not argue. This is a differentiation I find very important, because an argumentation chain would at least provide a red line why one approach is chosen over the other. By looking at the pure amount of frameworks and tools in the market and the amount of new players entering that space it is quite obvious that Enterprise Architecture is at the moment in a hype or fever situation. This can easily lead to total irrational decisions. On this topic I recommend to take a closer look at the Tulip Mania, some of the behaviours might also be seen in more recent crises.
Here (as mentioned before) I use GLUE as mapping tool for me. The real most interesting (and relevant) question for me always is: Where is a person stuck in the GLUE circulatory system.
And then I try to go into that position, placing myself onto the seat of that particular person to understand where the missing links are. If I manage to understand a portion of it I try to show the traces by using whatever terminology is approbiate for that particular person. Not GLUE, not a specific framework, but whatever language element helps. Sometimes indirect communication by others is the only way to succeed, sometimes I need to play over time. Invest today, harvest in a couple of month when a small trigger has grown into something powerful.
In most cases showing the connections to other information streams (in the circulatory system) allows the person at hand to see some possible answers to concrete problems which have not been solveable before. And there is one thing I know, then it is that I do not know anything, but what I know is that I am an Enterprise Architect. So in most cases I have literally no chance to give a correct concrete answer even though I am fairly often asked to give one, but I am able to help the information flow, to unblock the thinking, to link elements. There is my focus and that enables others to bring their great knowledge to the game and solve problems I would not have dreamt of being solved.
This is my final post in a long series of posts where I used the great post from Ivo Velitchkov as a red line to explain my thinking. Following posts did I create so far:
So it is time to summarize the whole series and once again I like to use a quote from Ivo:
In summary, more often than not, when contemporary mainstream EA is trying to introduce a common language, it creates confusion and additional work to deal with it. When trying to bridge the silos, it creates new silos instead. When trying reduce the IT spending, it in fact makes no change or increases them. When trying to deal with complexity, it’s just pathetic
I completely share Ivos line of thinking here. The first observation (“When contemporary mainstream EA is trying to introduce a common language, it creates confusion and additional work to deal with it”) is actually the main reason that started my work on GLUE. I was facing a situation where multiple software supplier and various integrators including a fairly diversified internal IT process structure had to deliver towards 4 releases every year without sharing any common knowledge and understanding, but all of them tried to teach introduce their approaches. So, I have to confess, in my first line of thinking, GLUE was just another stupid approach to create a common language to try to bring them all on the same page.
After working some weeks on the concepts I proudly presented it and was astonished that my brightness (GLUE) was not obvious to everyone. What I faced (and most of the feedback I collected over several years afterwards) was (of course) full misunderstanding. Everyone was all in for the idea of aligning to language to a single common one, as long as it is the one already used to protect the own way of thinking (tribe). So I totally failed and out of frustration I parked GLUE for a couple of years. Looking back the main problem was that I was so full of being right that I did not listen to those I wanted to follow my line of thinking.
Since then I have my changed my focus and live more up to the concept of being a ChickenBrain. I changed the focus from GLUE being the ultimate truth which everyone has to obey towards a pure mapping tool to identify GLUE diseases. Whatever approach or framework in an engineering context I face I immediately map it into GLUE to double check my understanding of the framework at hand (and to ask sense making questions if needed).
This is my final post in a long series of posts where I used the great post from Ivo Velitchkov as a red line to explain my thinking. Following posts did I create so far:
So it is time to summarize the whole series and once again I like to use a quote from Ivo:
In summary, more often than not, when contemporary mainstream EA is trying to introduce a common language, it creates confusion and additional work to deal with it. When trying to bridge the silos, it creates new silos instead. When trying reduce the IT spending, it in fact makes no change or increases them. When trying to deal with complexity, it’s just pathetic
I completely share Ivos line of thinking here. The first observation (“When contemporary mainstream EA is trying to introduce a common language, it creates confusion and additional work to deal with it”) is actually the main reason that started my work on GLUE. I was facing a situation where multiple software supplier and various integrators including a fairly diversified internal IT process structure had to deliver towards 4 releases every year without sharing any common knowledge and understanding, but all of them tried to teach introduce their approaches. So, I have to confess, in my first line of thinking, GLUE was just another stupid approach to create a common language to try to bring them all on the same page.
After working some weeks on the concepts I proudly presented it and was astonished that my brightness (GLUE) was not obvious to everyone. What I faced (and most of the feedback I collected over several years afterwards) was (of course) full misunderstanding. Everyone was all in for the idea of aligning to language to a single common one, as long as it is the one already used to protect the own way of thinking (tribe). So I totally failed and out of frustration I parked GLUE for a couple of years. Looking back the main problem was that I was so full of being right that I did not listen to those I wanted to follow my line of thinking.
Since then I have my changed my focus and live more up to the concept of being a ChickenBrain. I changed the focus from GLUE being the ultimate truth which everyone has to obey towards a pure mapping tool to identify GLUE diseases. Whatever approach or framework in an engineering context I face I immediately map it into GLUE to double check my understanding of the framework at hand (and to ask sense making questions if needed).