Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
In enterprise-architecture, how do we disentangle business-function, business-capability and business-service? This one’s for Adam Johnson, particularly as a follow-on to his comment to the previous post ‘More on EA and asset-types [Part 4]‘: I perceived your usage of function to be business function at a certain level of abstraction that could be perceived as a […]
What happens when the simple definitions of Simple and Complex become complex? Do they become so Complicated that they can collapse into the Chaotic? And if so, what can we do about it? This one’s triggered in part by a swathe of complaints from various enterprise-architecture folks about a certain ‘standard definition’ of Complex, and […]
What’s the relationship between sense-making and decision-making? And how does SCAN help with this? This is a kind of ‘double follow-on’ to a comment by Stephen Law on sense-making and decision-making; and another query by Cynthia Kurtz on the structure of SCAN. The structure of SCAN I’ll address Cynthia’s question first. She writes: I love […]
Yeah, right. ‘SCAN’. Yet another pretty acronym. What’s the point? What’s the use? Gimme some real examples, huh? This one’s a follow-up to the previous post “Let’s do a quick SCAN on this”, in which I introduced the SCAN frame for sensemaking at business-speed: (The above is the updated core-graphic – see ‘SCAN – an […]
Yup, I admit: I got it wrong. (Well, the kind of ‘wrong’ that happens often in early-stage development-work, anyway. ) In my initial version of the SCAN sensemaking-framework, I wasn’t happy with the ‘A’ keyword for the ‘not-certain but we do have time to make it sort-of work’ domain (upper-right quadrant). I’d started with Agile, […]
Sensemaking in business? What is this [choose-your-expletive] ‘SCAN‘? Why complicate things with yet another sensemaking-framework? Isn’t SCAN just a rebadged rip-off of Cynefin? And why not just use Cynefin like everyone else does, anyway? I’ll be providing some detailed worked-examples of SCAN in the next few posts or so, but I’d better get these questions […]
What’s a quick way to start making sense of some context? – fast enough to help in making good decisions fast, too? If you’ve been watching this blog or any of my other writing, you’ll know I’ve been working on this one for years, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. My first […]
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 […]
This post has been updated, and all updated text should be highlighted blue. I was asked the question I love to get the other day, “what do you mean by capability?”. I usually try to be brief when I explain my point of view and so I was this time to. However in this post […]
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 – […]
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 […]
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 […]