Why should anyone do enterprise-architecture?

A nice quick one this time! I came across this tweet today from business-model guru Alex Osterwalder: business_design: A business model’s performance is due more to the harmonious relationships among its elements than to the elements themselves I tend to describe a core driver for enterprise-architecture and the like as one very simple idea: things […]

More on EA and asset-types [4]

What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? In the first post in this series, we identified four distinct asset-dimensions: physical: physical ‘thing’ – independent, tangible, transferrable, alienable virtual: data, information, idea – independent, non-tangible, transferrable, non-alienable […]

More on EA and asset-types [3]

What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? In the first post in this series, we looked at the concept of four distinct asset-dimensions: physical: physical ‘thing’ – independent, tangible, transferrable, alienable virtual: data, information, idea – […]

More on EA and asset-types [2]

What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? In the previous post in this series, we looked at the concept of four distinct asset-dimensions: Physical, Virtual, Relational and Aspirational. The same dimensions carry right the […]

More on EA and asset-types [1]

What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? [I know I usually write too long, so as a kind of trial-run, I’m splitting up this original long-post into four smaller ones: please let me know […]

Once more unto the breach, dear friends…

“…once more, or fill up the wall with our English dead” – to quote Shakespeare’s Henry V… Because, yes, it’s Himself the Welsh Dragon that’s at it again, in yet another public attempt to denigrate me, my work, and, of course, my professional credibility, competence, integrity, and the rest. Of course. Oh no, not again… […]

Looking at the big picture

In case you’ve been wondering why I’ve been ranting about those apparently-abstract ideas about ‘Possessed by possession‘ and the like… What I’ve been calling ‘Really-Big-Picture enterprise-architecture‘ is about looking at how we can apply enterprise-architecture ideas at a much larger scale, right up to a fully global scope. The simplest way to describe this is as […]

Charisma, connection and brand

How do we make sense of brands and the like? How do brands actually work? And how does that connect with charisma, with ‘self-as-brand’? The starting point for this one was a re-tweet from narrative-knowledge guru Shawn Callahan: unorder: RT @thaler: Yesterday, in a program for Brazilian professional communicators, a participant defined charisma as the ability […]

Helping others make sense of my work

Have been struggling hard for the past few days with a truly brilliant challenge from Bulgarian enterprise-architect Ivo Velitchkov, when he dropped by for a visit near here over the weekend. And I’d have to admit I’m no nearer solving it as yet. Hmm… His point is this: there’s a huge body of knowledge – […]

The ‘This’ game and EA toolsets

Continuing on the theme of the ‘This’ game for engaging people in enterprise-architecture exploration and development, as described in the two previous posts ‘This: an exploratory game for service-oriented EA‘ and ‘More on the ‘This’ game for enterprise-architecture‘. The final note in that last post was about EA toolsets, and the need for appropriate support […]

More on the ‘This’ game for enterprise-architecture

A great session yesterday with Kevin Smith, brainstorming ideas for the ‘This’ game for service-oriented enterprise-architecture. I’d originally envisaged ‘This‘ as a kind of card-game, with questions and supporting-information printed on playing-cards: There would be that small set of mandatory ‘setting-the-scene’ questions – perhaps printed on cards with a different-colour back – but all of […]

This: an exploratory game for service-oriented EA

For a while now I’ve been brewing a kind of ‘exploratory game’ for enterprise-architecture, with the somewhat uninventive title of This. It’s based on the same service-oriented view of the enterprise as Enterprise Canvas – in fact we would typically use the game as part of modelling some aspect of the enterprise with Enterprise Canvas, […]