The cyclist-shopper’s tale
You can’t go wrong if you follow the rules, right? But what happens when you come across something where the ‘rules’ don’t make sense – and yet you still try to hold on to the certainty of ‘the rules’? Or,…
business
Principles and checklists
What is the role of principles in enterprise-architecture? What is a principle? For that matter, when is a principle not a principle? These were questions that came up in response to a post by Simplicable: ‘101 Principles of Enterprise-Architecture‘. Or…
Collaboration and anticollaboration – a tangible metaphor
What is collaboration? Why do people collaborate? Perhaps more to the point, why don’t they collaborate? How do we end up so often with what we’d have to call anticollaboration – the exact antithesis of collaboration? So I’m standing there in…
When all pieces fit like a perfect leather glove
The story behind this company and the individuals who designed this product and the enterprise that stands behind it is truly a story worth reading. P.S. Seriously, I’d like to own one of these designs. 
Function, capability and affordance
What can our business-capabilities do? As our business-needs and business-context change, what options do we have to re-purpose and re-use those capabilities? These questions came up for me from a brief yet excellent LinkedIn thread on affordances. To me that thread…
On chaos in enterprise-architecture
What is chaos? What does that word mean, in practice? And how – if at all – can we use chaos in enterprise-architecture? I’ve been having a great email back-and-forth on this with Cynthia Kurtz, co-originator of Cynefin, and – probably more relevant here – originator of the Confluence…
Why bother with diversity skills?
The opportunity to get ahead comes wrapped in the challenge. Nothing new then, it always does! The challenge is both personal and organizational. It is about building cultural proficiency, an intelligence and a skill-set, to thrive in the diversity that … Continue reading →
Data Protection Today and What’s Needed Tomorrow
Technology today allows thieves to copy sensitive data, leaving the original in place and thus avoiding detection. Published in October 2012, the Jericho Forum® Data Protection white paper reviews the state of data protection today and where it should be heading to meet tomorrow’s business needs. Continue reading →
Methods, mechanics, approaches
Why doesn’t ‘best-practice’ work as best-practice everywhere? And what is it that makes a skill a skill? For me, this one goes way back to work I did for my Masters degree, nigh on forty years ago. And to me,…
On human ‘applications’ in EA models
In enterprise-architecture, how should we model a human-based ‘application’ such as a customer-service line or reCaptcha or Amazon‘s ‘Mechanical Turk‘? [Note: on a first glance, this all looks really simple. As soon as we delve anywhere beneath the surface, though, it’s…
Showing my age, I guess…
Am I really showing my age, as an enterprise-architect? Or perhaps I should do even more? Dunno, quite… I had a blog-comment this morning from Christopher Lace, in response to a TOGAF-related blog-post of mine from back in May 2009:…
Requirements and constraints
What’s the difference between requirements and constraints? How do we identify and use them in change-projects and in enterprise architectures? This is a query that came up in my web-stats yesterday – and it should (I hope…) be one that I…