Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Ric Phillips We talk about bit rot, and information death. But there is a corollary – fact rot, and truth death. Either I am loosing my mind, or I have fallen into the incongruity of a bad television script and it’s 1994 again. In the last few days I have lost large chunks of time and have […]
If you sell a problem too successfully, you will not enjoy what comes next.
Enterprise Architecture doesn’t usually decide specific action.
So be very careful about how you characterise the need for action.
A problem-focus generates conflict and disorder.
A benefit-focus generates unity and collaboration.
Buy-before-build is generally sound advice. But uncritical acceptance and use of this principle has created a cargo-cult mentality.
Gunnar Hellekso has written a great article about the Cult of the Product.
Compulsory reading for every Enterprise Archi…
The chance that your car might be washed away is not the only reason to avoid driving across a flooded road.
The greater danger is that the road under the flood waters has already been washed away.
How many large system projects fail because of unexpected dependencies or unknown conditions?
Visibility is a clear and immediate benefit of a mature EA practice.
And remember, just because the road is going in the right direction – i.e., is aligned with your business – does not mean it’s at all safe.
Photo By Brian Stansberry (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Our relationship to technology isn’t only utilitarian.
It is also emotional.
Technology empowers us, it amplifies us in the world, and gives us super powers.
Maybe productivity is a not just a function of the design, but also of our attachment to it.
And maybe that emotional connection best expresses itself aesthetically – in personalisation, decoration and symbols of individuality.
And just maybe the reverse applies and standardising, commoditising, and depersonalising technology degrades the productivity of those who have to use it.
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What is reification?
This is when ugliness of reality is eschewed in favor of a beautiful model. The model, created by great credentialed brains, is a jewel, an object of adoration so lovely that flaws noted by outsiders are seen as gratuitous insults. The model is such an intellectual achievement that reality, which comes free, is felt an intrusion; the third wheel in the torrid love affair between modeler and model.
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– William M. Brigs
When is Bike not a Business Rule.:
It’s an unexceptional and foundational principle that governance is about behaviour.
But behaviour is about intentions.
Governance machinery that focuses on behaviour to the exclusion of intentions destroys value.
As this great story of the little bike that wasn’t, from Tom Graves illustrates so well.
What is Enterprise Architecture?
Accurate. In plain English. Engaging presentation. You don’t need to work in information technology to understand it.
Warning: The visuals in this animation suggest that modularity is the way to reduce combinatorial complexity. Not necessarily. See the lego fallacy.
It is your Circus, and it’s always your Monkey:
@elbanoitca says: There is a Polish expression for not my problem which translates literally as, “Not my Circus, Not my Monkey.”
Maybe, if you are a project manager. Never if you are an enterprise architect.
Enterprise architects need to be good communicators #2
Larry Wall, author of the PERL programming language once said,
People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You’d think that would also be obvious. Instead, we’re taught to express ourselves.
People speak with intent. Good communication means responding to someone’s intention, not their words.
Speak (and write) correctly and clearly. Listen graciously.
Enterprise architects need to be good communicators.
Actioning instead of doing. Impacting instead of affecting. Progress instead of continue. Moving forward and incentivising with respect to the upside.
It is easy to see that the cliches and jargon of today’s office culture are all about giving the impression of mastery, energy and success.
They don’t.
If you really wish to convey intelligence and competence, speak and write in plain English.
Todd Biske on why scope is where project management and enterprise architecture come into conflict.
