Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
The more time I spend as an Enterprise Architect, the more I realize just how important this role is. Yet, the stories that we tell fail to bring across that value. Our metaphors (framework, capability, roadmap) are woefully inadequate to c…
One thing that often occurs when a team sets out to create an EA tool is that they create a metamodel that will be supported within the tool. As I pointed out in my last post, I would like to openly challenge tool makers to allow multiple simulta…
One thing that I’ve come to appreciate is both the importance, and impermanence, of the Enterprise Architecture metamodel. If that last sentence didn’t piss you off, you weren’t listening. I’ve found two common groups of Enterprise Ar…
One challenge with long-running news stories is that it is often difficult to keep track of the “current” bits. Even important news can seem like “old” news because the problem is taking so long to be resolved, or even addressed. Wh…
I am an Enterprise Architect. It is my job to look at things the way they are, and envision the things that should be. It is my role to describe specific actions that specific people can take to change things (systems, processes, corporate …
High performance servers, cheap network storage, faster network connections, and improved peripheral performance have become subtle contributors for a culture of IT waste. System designers are increasingly relieved of the burden of designing efficient systems that utilize resources conservatively, and can easily fall back on platitudes like “just add more hardware”. A system designer may […]
I’ve been watching, with a mixture of dismay and mirth, a LinkedIn discussion between Adrian Grigoriu and a group of Enterprise Architects as he attempts to promote his new business architecture approach. Now, to be fair, Adrian has already wri…
Can the disciplines of architecture and information security do a better job of co-existence? What would that look like? Can we get to the point where security is truly “built in” versus “bolted on”? Continue reading →
About a week ago, I blogged a short story about a fictional town that faced a problem, with two competing solutions. There are many observations about life in corporate IT that I included in that story: how different people can end up competing w…
Our “The Art of Change: Fractal and Emergent” Executive Report covers
a model of change, showing how the vectors of change are different at different points in the lifecycle, so that agility means different things, depending on where in the lifecycle the product-market is
a discussion of how the meaning of business and the meaning of design […]
Context carries tremendous importance in disambiguation of meanings as well as in understanding of the actual meaning of words. The word “architecture” is exemplary in this regard. So first I will focus on the contexts in which the word “architecture” is being … Continue reading →
James McGovern blogged recently about his dislike of documentation as part of software development. While I disagree with his style and penchant for hyperbole, McGovern asks some good questions. Do we create documentation “because we shou…