Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Nick Malik Sometimes, I have a hard time being upbeat about the emergence of EA as a profession. This felling is especially acute when I come across a slick, well-prepared guide to Enterprise Architecture, written by an IT Architect, that is incomplete, ina…
As I’ve noted in prior posts, many hard working business process management professionals find the concept of “Business Capabilities” to be confusing at best, and counterproductive at worst. In a recent article in BPTrends, Paul Harmon made…
For those of you who have been waiting for me to announce the release of the newest version of the Enterprise Business Motivation Model, I’m happy to announce that version 3.5 is available now. To visit a Wordpress site set up to explain the …
Recently, Paul Harmon published an article in BPTrends that discusses his views on the notion of Business Capability, and whether it is a useful concept. He was not particularly kind to the field of Business Architecture in his article. Whi…
There is a clear distinction between Enterprise Architecture, as described by the architect, and Enterprise Architecture as implemented by the enterprise. I would like to posit the following as a fundamental principle that describes the differenc…
I ran across a document from the Dept. of Commerce that describes Enterprise Architecture as follows: “An Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a blueprint that explains how the results of Strategic Planning, Performance Planning, Budgeting, Capital Pl…
Microsoft IT made a bet, a couple of years ago, on using capability modeling in our own internal Business Architecture program. That required us to have a shared and consistent hierarchy of business capabilities that we would use across all lines…
Back when my kids were small, they all played soccer on local youth teams. It is interesting to watch very young kids play soccer, because the instructions are so simple: kick the ball into the goal. With instructions like that, what do y…
As an Enterprise Architect, I’m first and foremost a problem solver. I don’t like to ignore problems. Yet, it appears that EA as a field has a problem and I’m finding it tough to ignore it. What is the problem? If you judg…
It is amazing how often I need to share the very basic concept of Enterprise Architecture with my peers, customers, stakeholders, and associates. Microsoft’s customers often ask about Enterprise Architecture, and when our customers come to visi…
A colleague of mine, Gabriel Morgan, pointed out a recent Infoworld article by Bob Lewis called “Why running IT as a business is a train wreck waiting to happen.” So, I read the article and while I agree with some of Mr. Lewis sentime…
I am currently noodling the idea of a one-page view of my employer (Microsoft) for the purpose of rationalizing the sharing of services across business units and business models. (If you understood the previous sentence, you are probably an enter…