Architecture by Influence: Leadership

There was a great discussion on Twitter today regarding influence, mandates, and leadership. My interest started with a tweet from Chris Venable, directed at Burton Group/Gartner EA analyst, Mike Rollings: If EA is so important, why must it do everything through influence? No one ever says that to the CIO… I thought this was a […]

Architecture by Influence: Solution Architecture

A key to any Enterprise Architecture program is solution architecture. Solution architecture is where work gets done. If your EA team is disconnected from the solution architecture effort, you’ll probably hear the term “ivory tower” a lot. Unfortunately, it’s far more common than you may think. Looking the typical project, the first question is where […]

Enterprise Architecture Strategies

I recommend you read Chris Curran’s excellent blog entry on 16 Enterprise Architecture Strategies Learned The Hard Way http://tinyurl.com/32hfj8s I’ve included his list below with my views and comments following that. 1. An exhaustive enterprise level blueprint is virtually impossible to build – it’s too big and no one will buy-in 2. The best strategy […]

Key SOA Governance Considerations – Part 4

So far the articles 1, 2 and 3 in the series have addressed the SOA governance aspects such as, understanding the context, defining the objectives and parameters, understanding various components such as timing and artefacts to govern, roles and respo…

Enterprise Architect: Advisor versus Gatekeeper

A recent conversation with a colleague delved into the complicated world of new technology decisions. At every organization I’ve been at, this has been a source of contention between four major groups: Enterprise Architects, Domain Architects, Development Teams, and Engineering Teams. I specifically listed Enterprise and Domain Architects separately, because I’ve seen contention between those […]

Modeling the MDM Blueprint – Part IV

In part II and III of this series we discussed the Common Information and Canonical Models. Because MDM is a business project we need to establish of a common set of models that can be referenced independent of the technical infrastructure or patterns we plan on using. Now it is time to introduce the Operating […]