Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
One of my uncle’s favorite jokes goes like this: Greg: “Hey Gabriel, say to me ‘what’s the most important thing about humor?’” Gabriel: “Okay Greg, what’s the mo-“ Greg: “Timing.” [At this point, you’re supposed to laugh] “Timing” is the most important thing to business strategy planning As it turns out, timing is also the…
Six years ago I posted a blog article called Solution Architect Skills Idea. At the time, I was a practicing Solution Architect pushing the boundaries to mature the Solution Architect discipline. I built the Solution Architect Skills Assessment to help organize the skills I felt were necessary to be a world class Solution Architect and…
The last year has been a very busy one, and for everyone who subscribed to this feed a rather poor one in terms of entries. The reason for the lack of postings is very simply down to the effort required to write a book!.
This was released in the UK a few weeks ago and will be released in the US later in November. We have a website for the book with its own blog that provides background to the ideas of storytelling and visual design:
http://storiesthatmovemountains.com/
We also have a Facebook page where we hope to build more of a community around the CAST model and gather feedback.
http://www.facebook.com/StoriesThatMoveMountains
In the last few days a good selection of pages from the book have been uploaded to Amazon to allow you to click inside and see the very visual style we used.
You can also go to ComputerWeekly.com research library and read chapter 2 in full (although a registration is required).
If you download the chapter and scroll right to the end you will find out how to buy the book with a 30% discount.
I’ll get back to blogging about IT, Enterprise Architecture and IT Strategy on this blog, so if you’re interested in the content for storytelling, visual design and improving your presentations please take a look at the facebook page and my other blog.
If there’s a great story coming out of the recent presidential election, it’s how analytical, evidence-based methods are disrupting the conventional wisdom of political pundits and campaigns to deliver significantly more reliable forecasts and actionable insights. The most … Continue reading →
Delivering late: a viable option for behind-schedule projects?(photo credit: marcp_dmoz)Projects that are behind schedule are usually faced with the following options:1. Add more staff to the project2. Work longer hours, including doing overtime and bu…
Last week our “2013 Professional Effectiveness Planning Guide: Coming to Terms With the Nexus of Forces” was published on Gartner.com. It discusses the Nexus of Forces — social, mobile, cloud and information — and the profound implications for IT. The nexus forces combine to provide a platform and impetus for innovation, but many organizations are […]
The post The Nexus and IT Jobs – It’s Hip to be Square appeared first on Mike Rollings.
What is Enterprise Architecture?
Accurate. In plain English. Engaging presentation. You don’t need to work in information technology to understand it.
Warning: The visuals in this animation suggest that modularity is the way to reduce combinatorial co…
In the current election “season” in the USA there has been much ado about ensuring that only registered voters are allowed to vote. The Republican Party describes this as ensuring that any attempts at fraud are squelched. The Democratic Party describes…
It is your Circus, and it’s always your Monkey: @elbanoitca says: There is a Polish expression for not my problem which translates literally as, “Not my Circus, Not my Monkey.”
Maybe, if you are a project manager. Never if you are an enterprise archi…
Enterprise architects need to be good communicators #2
Larry Wall, author of the PERL programming language once said,
People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be …
Ran across a post from someone who is pondering platform building. As someone who has been building platforms for a while, I figured I should provide some feedback!There are very few standards in this area. Few can even agree on what a “pla…
Calculating Total Cost of Ownership (or TCO for short) is something that’s familiar to those of us who’ve been through the large organization planning processes. Yet, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs that believe they can move mountains with nothing more than bubble gum and shoe string. And there’s no shortage of investors who believe that they can fund the next Google with $25k.
Well, as John Adams quipped, “facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Today brings news of investment freeze by Joystick Labs, a Triad-based video game accelerator. Accelerators and incubators can be attractive to investors than an a single startup since they provide a rudimentary diversification mechanism, and hence reduce risk. But without proper due diligence, the foundation on which this diversification is based is shaky at best. And TCO is part of that due diligence (at least in our model.) Bubble gum and shoestring, duck tape, and other such pronouncements may sound soothing, but things take as long as they take and there’s still no such thing as free lunch.
Joystick Labs seems to have found this out the hard way:
John Austin, managing director of Durham-based Joystick, said the prevailing economics of the video game market – which have changed considerably since Joystick was launched in 2010 – requires more financing than Joystick and its investors could afford. “It has become very difficult for an independent developer to get noticed,” Austin said. “For every ‘Angry Birds,’ there are literally tens of thousands of great companies not getting noticed.”
Did the prevailing economics of their market changed that significantly since 2010? Or is it that they found through two years of experience in launching new video game companies that the startup TCO for their market wound up being much greater than anticipated? Not a day goes by when I don’t hear from entrepreneurs and investors questioning why something costs much more than they “feel” it should. Those of you who know me (which is probably why you’re reading this in the first place,) I’m not into feelings, I’m into numbers, and numbers only deceive those who want to be deceived.
AAB