#eavoices

RPA and the Future of Work, Dystopian Views

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In the last several months, I’ve given ten talks on Robotic Process Automation (RPA), it’s relationship to AI and future affect on jobs. These were mostly at tech conferences where the audience is a mix of corporate and government technology and business leaders. The industries represented are diverse, as is the process focus and expertise. But participants are similar in important ways. They are excited, if not well informed, about the potential of AI and robotics. The average IQ in the room seems well above the US average of 98 which is is a solid ninth in world rankings. And lastly, they all will benefit either professionally or financially from the progression of robotics.

No shame in making money. I wish I’d made more. But there is more then a hint of nervous discomfort just below the surface that stems from the removal of humans from the workforce. There are many cute references to taking the robot out of the human. This is supposed to mean that we are using humans essentially as robots, and the less we do that, the better off they will be. But the fact is, many workers today are good at the routine, feel productive, and may lack the mental quickness for other tasks. Several firms had given human names to their new digital workers as if calling them Yoda or Jennifer will make them more accepted by the people they are replacing.

RPA Targets The Cubicle Working Class

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Architecture Corner: New Technology – Seven Deadly Sins of IT

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Episode 2 of this season of Architecture Corner is out (I made a guest appearance in episode 1, “Good at Innovation”). In this installment, Chris the CEO is experiencing lust for new technology. What happens when the CEO starts drooling over the latest shiny thing without a thought to whether it makes good business sense?

5 Steps to Connect EA to Strategy (a Very Short Summary!)

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Many enterprise architecture (EA) teams struggle with creating a program that demonstrates the level of strategic value that they believe EA should have. Even after following all the advice in frameworks and online articles, chief architects and CIOs still struggle as EA programs fail to reach their potential as an influencer of strategy execution across Read more

5 Steps to Connect EA to Strategy (a Very Short Summary!)

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Many enterprise architecture (EA) teams struggle with creating a program that demonstrates the level of strategic value that they believe EA should have. Even after following all the advice in frameworks and online articles, chief architects and CIOs still struggle as EA programs fail to reach their potential as an influencer of strategy execution across Read more

Innovation, Intention, Planning and Execution

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  Convergence is an interesting thing. Greger Wiktrand and I have been trading posts back and forth on the subject of innovation for almost eighteen months now (forty posts in total). I’ve also been writing a lot on the concept of organizations as systems, (twenty-two posts over the last year, with some overlap with innovation). […]

50 years ago Richard Montague invented his grammar that first enabled IT architecture first possible

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1967 Richard Montague first voiced: “There is in my opinion no important theoretical difference between natural languages and the artificial languages of logicians; indeed, I consider it possible to comprehend the syntax and semantics of both kinds of language within a single natural and mathematically precise theory.” A few years later he than published his … Continue reading 50 years ago Richard Montague invented his grammar that first enabled IT architecture first possible →

EA = Enterprise Agility

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Enterprise Architecture equals Enterprise Agility
by Mike “MO” Oliver, SOACA
Arhicecture word cloud.png

So how does Enterprise Architecture translate into equaling Enterprise Agility, other than the acronyms both being EA?

Standardization

One key element of any quality Enterprise Architecture is the setting and governing standards across the enterprise.  If you have standards on how to do this or that, then you will likely have templates for various code elements or perhaps you have standardized on a Framework or Enterprise Service Bus.  All of these will reduce the training time, design time, and development and testing time to build a solution or service.  Saving time in going from concept to production is by definition improving agility.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Enterprises that adopt SOA for their strategic integration approach do so largely because of the efficiency  and productivity gains a Service Oriented Architecture can bring. SOA and the Microservices subset are all about designing solutions around small service components that follow separation of concerns and loose coupling paradigms, which also translate into better agility through more granular design and reusable services.  If 50% of the services your current solutions use are reusable, then building a new solution will take much less effort and time, giving you better agility.

Business Architecture

Following TOGAF and documenting your Business Architecture may not seem like it helps translate into Agility, but look at it this way.  If you do not have your Business Architecture documented fully, then as problems and opportunities arise (and they will), how do you know for sure that you don’t already have something in place to do the job? Or worse how do you know what the gap analysis is from what you have to what you need?  That takes time and if you make a mistake and miss something, then you may spend even more time and money to get it right later.  This all translates into Agility.

Conclusion

Agility essentially comes from two things:

  1. Knowledge that keeps you from making mistakes that lead to wasted time and effort.  Enterprise Architecture is mostly about organizing what you have so you know what you have and what you need, and that knowledge makes your enterprise more agile.

  2. The basic Engineering Principle, DRY for Don’t Repeat Yourself.  SOA, as part of your Enterprise Architecture, puts a priority on reuse, separation of concerns and loose coupling. Do those things and you will avoid duplication of effort which equals agility.


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