Nogility
Large technology organizations don’t simply become agile. They’re either agile or not. If they’re not, the path to being so is via change, often radical change at that.
management
Taylorism – A Pox upon Agile
This past Thursday my colleague Kirk Knoernschild pointed out a blog post by Alistair Cockburn about Taylorism creeping into the world of agile. Alistair’s post ignited a discussion within Gartner’s IT1 team reflecting on how it applied to our own agile work practices. What follows are some of my insights about the dangers of Tayloristic […]
Gamification – a Small Play for Game Dynamics
Gamification, where organizations incorporate game dynamics into applications, is one of the latest trends. Many view it as a silver bullet to load into marketing websites, innovation tools, worker productivity tools, ERP systems, and social environments. The hope is that these applications will attract and retain ‘players’ that will get hooked into playing their new […]
Unprincipled Architecture
Anything IT does should be seen as consistent. Using words like “Principle” with the definition most people have for it is a sure-fire way to disappoint folks. It turns out that instead of a iron clad ‘always-will-do’ thing, our Principles are merely s…
Where Enterprise Architecture and Project Management Intersect
My long-term readers know that I function as an enterprise architect and project manager (but not both simultaneously) and that I have taught (and continue to teach) project management courses at the university level for over 10 years. Over the…
Where Enterprise Architecture and Project Management Intersect
My long-term readers know that I function as an enterprise architect and project manager (but not both simultaneously) and that I have taught (and continue to teach) project management courses at the university level for over 10 years. Over the…
A life out of control
So many things in our life are governed by the idea that we can control the outcome. Take strategy as as an example. For years strategists have operated under the false notion that strategies were conceived, plans created and execution of the plan happened. This resulted in an elite view of conducting strategy and the […]
Book Review: Troux Enterprise Architecture Solutions
I recently completed reading the book Troux Enterprise Architecture Solutions by Richard Reese. First, the disclosure: this book was provided to me by Packt Publishing for the explicit purpose of this review. In addition, Packt is also the publisher of my own book, SOA Governance. I have no relationship with Troux, however, I have had […]
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 […]
Making Good Decisions
This is a first in what I hope will be a few blogs around the subject of architecture by influence. There are no shortage of people who are writing that enterprise architects can’t be successful unless they have some teeth, i.e. the ability to stop activities in their tracks that aren’t compliant with the architectural […]
Maintaining a Service Mentailty
On Twitter, Brenda Michelson of Elemental Links started a conversation with the question: Do #entarch frameworks enable or constrain practice of (value from) enterprise architecture? In my comments back to Brenda, it became clear to me that there’s a trap that many teams fall into, not just Enterprise Architecture, and that’s falling into an inward […]