Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
There is a massive movement of organisations moving to agile-at-scale (e.g. SAFe). Ironically, it can turn into an organisation becoming one big ‘project’, the opposite of what agile wants to achieve.
As enterprise architecture has developed as a discipline over the last 25 years, it has borrowed significantly from business strategy. Given this, it is important to recognize and understand the business strategy underpinnings of enterprise architecture. A great example is the “Creating the Corporate Future” written by strategic, systems thinker Russell Ackoff. This article will share some of the key insights from the book that were building blocks of enterprise architecture, so you be an even better enterprise architect and strategic thinker.
By Myles Suer, #CIOChat Facilitator, CIO.com Contributor, and Dell Boomi Head of Global Enterprise Marketing
Many years ago, I was asked to review an early draft of ITIL Version 3.0. I remember even taking the draft service strategy book on vacation with me. My wife asked me at one point why I was getting so excited about a ‘tech manual’ while she said that she was reading something truly exciting, a romance novel. In the end, I made many comments and suggestions as a business strategist. Most did not get accepted.
Every organization needs to be Agile in order to handle all kind of forces and developments inside and outside the organization. Equally, organizations also need the structure and overarching view of an organization that is provided by Enterprise Architecture. and in particular, The TOGAF® standard, a standard of The Open Group. Both Lean and EA can make organizations more Agile, but work from a different, complementary perspective. By synergizing both EA and Lean knowledge, techniques, and people, many organizations are exploiting the strengths of both approaches.
Digital enterprise, digital transformation, Agile and DevOps as a means to keep IT change going, these are all illustrations of a tipping pont in the information revolution.
At The Open Group Amsterdam 2019, participants were offered the chance to participate in an exciting new gamification of IT4IT™, a standard of The Open Group. Jan Schilt, co-owner of GamingWorks BV acted as the CEO role of a Banking concern named UBanQ. In that game role, Jan challenged several teams to prove that they could become the bank of choice for customers in a highly competitive, rapidly changing digital world.
The delivery of IT services to the business has changed significantly in recent times. Largely driven by the consumerization of IT, DevOps is being charged with linking development and operation teams to improve the quality and speed of delivering new offerings to consumers.This shift is being facilitated by the rapidly changing digital landscape and the increased demand for new products and services.
The Open Group IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, a standard of The Open Group uses a value chain framework that applies this concept to IT by defining an integrated IT management framework focusing on the lifecycle of services. This allows IT to achieve the same level of business predictability and efficiency that supply chain management has allowed for the business.
The Open Group IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, a standard of The Open Group, is a value chain-based standard reference and operating model for managing the business of IT. It creates a model of the functions that IT performs to help organizations identify the activities that contribute to business competitiveness.
It supports real-world use-cases driven by the Digital Economy such as, Cloud-sourcing, Agile, DevOps, and service brokering, and is designed for existing landscapes, and accommodates future IT paradigms, making it ideal for Digital Transformation projects.
The Open Group hosted its latest event July 23 – 26 in the Lone Star State at Houston’s Westin Oaks at the Galleria. The theme was ‘Digital Transformation in the Energy Industry’. We welcomed over 200 attendees from 13 countries, including Brazil, China, and the Netherlands.
In October 2015, The Open Group launched a new standard, The Open Group IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, and I personally feel this may have been one of the biggest events when it comes to the history of IT. At last, IT is starting to really mature! Let me tell you why I have this view.
In 2017 — although I suppose I should say in 2018, as it’s almost the end of December — it is simply unacceptable for any IT organization to focus on an Agile-only or DevOps-only journey. They are two sides of the same coin, and one completes the other…