Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
I have a problem. One that might be relevant for you too, if you work in enterprise-architecture or related disciplines. Here’s the situation: I have here this weblog on enterprise architecture and suchlike, built up out of almost a decade of…
For a viable enterprise-architecture [EA], now and into the future, we need frameworks, methods and tools that can support the EA discipline’s needs. Yet there’s one element common to most of the current mainstream EA-frameworks and notations – such as…
This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 389, features Tom’s essay on Agile acceptance testing, Kim Pries talking about soft skills, and a Form Follows Function installment on sense-making and decision-making in the practice of software architecture. Tom and I discuss my post “OODA vs PDCA – What’s the […]
What do architects do? And why? At this point we’d usually reach out for some apposite metaphor… And yes, by far the most common metaphor is ‘boxes and lines’, or ‘boxes and arrows’. If we take the most stereotyped, ‘boxy’ view…
One of the constant challenges for enterprise-architecture – probably all forms of architecture, in fact – is explaining the value of what we do. For example, like a good conference-organiser or event-host, often the better we do our work, the…
So often, it seems, I meet up with business execs for whom the only thing that matters is the money. In a big corporation, it’s often about the current quarter and the stock-price; in a smaller business, it’s often about…
This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 385, features Tom’s essay on Agile portfolio metrics, Kim Pries talking about the value of diversity, and a Form Follows Function installment on sense-making and decision-making in the practice of software architecture. Tom and I discuss my post “Architecture and OODA Loops […]
Always enlivening and enlightening, and working with what is perhaps still the closest we’ll see so far to a real ‘the architecture of the enterprise’, the Defence-oriented Integrated-EA conference in London in early March is one of the regular highlights of my…
Enterprise-architecture: yeah, so much of it is kinda abstract… – all that ‘meta-’ and stuff. Which turns many people off, big-time. Unfortunately, “all that ‘meta-’ and stuff” is really important: it helps people explore the real complexities of their own enterprise,…
Given the parlous state of most current enterprise-architecture ‘education’, is there any way we could do it better? One option might be to reframe EA-education as a game. I don’t mean ‘gamification’ as per the asinine ‘boy-scout badges for enterprise-architects’…
“Are you the guy who writes books?”, asks the young woman behind me in the cafe. Well, yes, I am – but much as for her, it’s taken me a moment or two to recognise her, and then remember the…
In my post “Architecture and OODA Loops – Fast is not Enough”, I stated that sense-making and decision-making were critical skills for the practice of software architecture. I further stated that I found the theories of John Boyd, particularly his OODA loop, useful in understanding and describing effective sense-making and decision-making. My conclusion was that […]