More on that enterprise-architecture ‘help needed’

Given the responses to my previous post ‘Guess I could do with some help here…‘, seems it’d be useful if I clarify a bit more what kind of help I most need. (Or we need, rather, as an industry and discipline: probably the only ‘I’-part here is that I seem to be one of the […]

Knowledge, process, people, and enterprise-architecture

Reading KCore‘s excellent blog-post ‘High quality, High Impact KM: Start with the right questions‘, this early section of the article caught my eye: I’ve set out my stall when it comes to KM and by now it should be pretty clear that I believe that successful KM outputs are reliant on people.  I also strongly believe […]

Guess I could do with some help here…

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been kinda pouring out the posts on enterprise-architecture and the like, over the past few weeks or so… (A few people have complained about the overload, and probably with good reason, too! Oh well. My apologies, anyway.) What’s happening for me is that it seems all of the work […]

Enterprise-architecture? – it’s all about story

Enterprise-architecture is all about story. The enterprise itself is a story; but the practice of enterprise-architecture is all about stories too. Let me tell you a story… There once was this half-crazed guy who used to go on about an even crazier idea that there might be a bit more to enterprise-architecture than just, well, […]

Two points of view on (enterprise) architecture

Was showing a colleague one of my favourite small books yesterday: Matthew Frederick’s 101 Things I Learned In Architecture School. Briefly flicking through the two-page spreads, one caught my eye. Seems so apposite to enterprise-architecture and the like that it’s worth reproducing here in its entirety:
Two points of view on architecture
ARCHITECTURE IS AN EXERCISE IN […]

Interview on enterprise-architecture at AE-Rio 2011

I must admit I’m pleased with this brief interview, filmed by the AV crew at AE Rio 2011 (many thanks, guys!). It covers a lot of ground in barely four minutes: the importance of stories and culture in enterprise-architecture, key differences in the Latin America market compared to elsewhere, and much else besides.

(There’s supposed to […]

‘Ba’, Cynefin, place and architecture

Just been reading (via Tweet by Bill Ives) a post by Anne Marie McEwan on ‘Loosening the Taylorist Stranglehold on the Workplace‘. Within a much larger context in a very good article, this one brief section caught my attention:
The Japanese concept of ‘ba’ came up in one of the face-to-face conversations. … Nonaka et al say that […]

Enterprise architecture as language

Each enterprise has its own distinct language. More to the point, the enterprise-architecture is a language.
I probably need to take a step or two back at this point…
For quite some while I’ve been using the metaphor of ‘hologram’ to describe how we collect and store and describe information about the enterprise. Once we’ve done the […]

Cynefin as place: a respectful enquiry

[A slightly risky post, this, given the unfortunate history between myself and Dave Snowden: but I want to emphasise that it is in good faith, as a genuine enquiry that I believe would be of real value to those of working in enterprise-architectures and to the broader Cynefin community.]
I’ve been delighted to see a useful […]

Modelling people in enterprise-architecture

As mentioned in the previous post, one of the key characteristics of ‘crossing the chasm’ to a viable whole-of-enterprise architecture is the explicit inclusion of people. In short, we need to be able to model and map where people fit in relation to the architecture.
But there’s a catch. A big catch. People should not be […]