Navigating VPEC-T

Here’s the poster for a VPEC-T thinking framework master class focused on knotty problem solving & design innovation.The aim of this map is to provide a starter-for-ten checklist of things you might consider when doing a VPEC-T analysis/design – wh…

Small worlds – Splintered thoughts

Oliver’s Question My friend Oliver Baier (@OliverBaier) recently tweeted: “Has #RBPEA just become bigger and more urgent in 2016? People seeking (and buying) ever simpler answers to ever bigger problems”. The hashtag RBPEA was coined by Tom Graves (@Tetradian) and means Really Big Picture Enterprise Architecture. It says that to understand an enterprise one increasingly […]

TCO bias

TCO as total cost of ownership was created to compare different cars in terms their costs as fleet cars in the mid 80s. Later Gartner thought it a good idea to move the concept into information technology. The problem with TCO on cars was that you need a very precise number of variables and that … Continue reading TCO bias

Keep it simple, not propose simplicity

With TOGAF a lot of architects always restate KISS, however being simple is actually not simple as there are aspects of being simple that are plainly awful. Example for being simple are using flags instead of value pairs, create a new structured customer table on a micro service instead of reusing the existing enterprise wide … Continue reading Keep it simple, not propose simplicity

TOGAF® User Group Meetings

By The Open Group Since its inception more than two decades ago, TOGAF®, an Open Group standard, has grown to become the de facto global framework for creating Enterprise Architectures. Thousands of companies worldwide have adopted and adapted TOGAF to … Continue reading

Baynes and Bateson

Back in November we said goodbye to a lovely guy and one of the finest musicians I’ve ever played with, Ifor Baynes. Most people who’ll read this have probably never heard of him. Would that the world were different.     Ifor actually died in April but this was a memorial organized by some of his closest […]

Everybody Needs PraXtice

This year marks thirty years since the publishing of Zachman’s seminal paper. And since then there’s been a torrent of publications on architecture. What’s always puzzled me was that despite all that brain power and all that paper, and believe me I’ve got bookcases and filing cabinets full of it, I’ve never come across  a […]

Route to Enterprise Scale Agility

Of all the imperatives of digital transformation, the one success factor on which there is consensus is “enterprise-wide agility”. Agility not limited to IT services alone, but all enterprise services working together. Be it the “software development process” or the … Continue reading

IT service providers: SMEs going global

Published in Outsource Magazine As the media never tires of pointing out, the axis of world economic power is speedily shifting to the East, both in terms of working-age population and GDP. As many of our SME-sized IT service provider clients … Continue reading

Stop service providers becoming data security Achilles heel

Published in ComputerWeekly  The UK government’s recently announced cyber security threat information sharing partnership serves to underline the level of cyber risk organisations are facing. For those responsible for public and private sector IT services, it is of further concern … Continue reading