More on principles and decision-time

Seems that that Twitter-conversation about principles and decision-making just keeps on rollin’ on. Stijn Viaene kicked the ball rolling again with the following Tweet: destivia: @ebuise @tetradian @richardveryard Never forget a ‘model’ is always only a preliminary version of how we see or want to see reality. After which, yes, the whole happy ‘passel o’ […]

How useful are principles in enterprise-architecture?

Not quite sure where this one started: probably from this Tweet a few days back by Anna Mar (@simplicableanna): simplicableanna: 7 Reasons You Need Architecture Principles http://bit.ly/xqzDkl #entarch Gerold Kathan retweeted it, and I passed it on again as what I thought of as a useful summary. Nothing unusual there. But then one of my […]

Decision-making – linking intent and action [4]

How is it that what we do doesn’t necessarily match up with what we plan to do? How can we best ‘keep to the plan’? Or, alternatively, how do we know how to adapt ‘the plan’ to a changing context? What governance do we need for this? How do we keep everything on-track to intent […]

Decision-making – linking intent and action [3]

How is it that what we actually do in the heat of the action can differ so much from the intentions and decisions we set beforehand? How can we bring them into better alignment, to ’keep to the plan’? And how does this affect our enterprise-architectures? What we’ve been looking at in this series of posts is […]

Decision-making – linking intent and action [2]

How is it that what we actually do in the heat of the action can differ so much from the intentions and decisions we set beforehand? How can we bring them into better alignment, to ’keep to the plan’? And how does this affect our enterprise-architectures? This is Part 2 of this exploration: the first part is […]

Decision-making – linking intent and action [1]

How is it that what we actually do in the heat of the action can differ so much from the intentions and decisions we set beforehand? How can we bring them into better alignment, so that we do ‘keep to the plan’, at the individual level, and across the enterprise? And once again, what implications does […]

Decision-making – belief, fact, theory and practice

In what ways do ideology and experience inform decision-making in real-time practice? How do we bridge between the intentions we make before and after action, with the decisions we make at the point of action itself? And what implications does this have for our enterprise-architectures? This extends the previous post on real-time decision-making, ‘Belief and […]

Ensuring that the Simple stays simple

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 […]

Standing up for the value of our work

How do we prove the value of our work? How we defend that value against unprincipled attack? These are real questions that we all need to face, especially in inherently-’unprovable’ disciplines such as enterprise-architecture. So let’s put these questions into practice. Several people have asked me for a detailed worked-example of the sensemaking-technique of context-space mapping […]

How do we make EA make sense?

Those notions of ‘whole-enterprise architecture’ that I’ve been describing in the ‘no-plan Plan‘ series of posts make solid sense to a fair few people – particularly those who’ve some experience of systems-thinking, design-thinking and the like. But it’s painfully clear that it doesn’t seem to make much sense to anyone else: and I must admit […]

The no-plan ‘Plan’ for whole-enterprise architecture – a summary

That description of ‘the plan that is no plan’, about the direction that I’m moving into after moving out of mainstream ‘enterprise’-architecture, kind of ended up a bit longer than intended. (No surprise there, unfortunately… ) Oh well. In effect, though, it’s also a kind of ‘manifesto’ for whole-enterprise architecture – about what needs to […]

The no-plan Plan: people in architecture

Okay, time for the final theme in that ‘no-plan Plan‘ – which somehow seems to be turning into a kind of ‘manifesto for whole-enterprise architecture’ or something like that, for some reason. Oh well. Anyway, this part’s about what is perhaps the most-serious ‘the Forgotten’ in almost all current ‘enterprise’-architectures, namely people. I’ll keep this one […]