Two recent EA conferences – Unicom and BAEA
Need to do a bit of a catch-up on recent activity – a lot’s been going on, but it’s only now that I’m having a few scraps of time to write it all down. Two key items have been a…
Tom Graves
The end of enterprise-architecture?
In terms of ‘means and ends’, what’s the end of enterprise-architecture – its real, practical purpose? [Don’t worry! – this isn’t yet another round in those interminable arguments about ‘What is enterprise-architecture?’… What follows would apply just as much to…
Anecdotes and government-policy
It started out as a comment on satire, but quietly explores some much more serious themes: this particular Twitter back-and-forth between Stephen Bounds and Shawn Callahan (via his Anecdote persona) is another one that definitely deserves a more permanent place! It…
Architecture, structure and story
What does architecture actually do? What makes it different from anything else that people do? (There’s no particular start-point to this one: it’s probably a mixture of several of those interminable LinkedIn conversations, but likely a bunch of other stuff as…
What’s the size of an enterprise?
What’s the size of an enterprise? Perhaps more important from a pragmatic perspective, what’s the minimum size of enterprise where an enterprise-architect might be needed? Starting-point for this one was one of those long, tangled LinkedIn threads that wander around in…
Business Model Canvas beyond startups – Part 3: Back-end
How can we use Business Model Canvas beyond its initial intended context of commercial startups? In particular, how best can we use it to explore the ‘back-end’ of the business-models – the internal and supplier-facing parts – for non-profit organisations and government,…
Dotting the joins (the JEA version)
[The new editor of the Journal of Enterprise Architecture, Len Fehskens, asked me to expand my previous post ‘Dotting the joins’ into a formal paper for the Journal. Which I did, and it was duly published in the August 2013…
Michael Margolis on story (and business)
What is story? Perhaps more to the point, why story? This was another item that whipped by on the Twitterstream that I felt needed to be kept somewhere somewhat more permanent – a stream of comments on story and the nature…
Business Model Canvas beyond startups – Part 2: Front-end
How can we use Business Model Canvas beyond its initial intended context of commercial startups? In particular, how best can we use it to explore the ‘front-end’ of the business-models – the customer-facing parts – for non-profit organisations and government, and existing commercial businesses…
On dubious definitions
How can we make sure that our definitions actually link up properly with the context they purport to describe? How can we test our definitions for validity and meaningfulness in the respective context? Perhaps rather too often, amidst those endless…
Employees as customers of HR
What is the proper – or most effective – relationship between the so-called ‘Human Resources’ department and the employees of an organisation? (Okay, I admit it, I’ve allowed myself to get somewhat distracted from finishing the promised assessment of use…
Business Model Canvas beyond startups – Part 1
Is Business Model Canvas at risk of becoming another TOGAF – a useful tool for a specific context, yet often more of a hindrance than a help wherever people try to use it beyond its original purpose? And if so,…