Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
What does the World War II naval campaign known as the Battle of the Atlantic have to do with learning and innovation? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Early in the war, Britain found itself in a precarious position. While being an island nation provided defensive advantages, it also came with logistical challenges. Food, […]
@mrkwpalmer (TIBCO) invites us to take what he calls a Hyper-Darwinian approach to analytics. He observes that “many algorithms, once discovered, have a remarkably short shelf-life” and argues that one must be as good at “killing off weak or vanquished…
What’s the biggest problem with technical debt? In my opinion, the biggest problem is that it works. Just like the electrical outlet pictured above, systems with technical debt get the job done, even when there’s a hidden surprise or two waiting to make life interesting for us at some later date. If it flat-out failed, […]
What does an old World War II tank have to do with innovation? I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating – one of benefits of having a blog is the ability to interact with and learn from people all over the world. For example, Greger Wikstrand and I have been trading blog posts on […]
Last week, in a post titled “The Flaw in All Things”, John Vincent discussed the problem of seeing “the flaw in all things”: It’s overwhelming. It’s paralyzing. I can’t finish a project because I keep finding things that could cause problems. I even mentioned this to our CTO and CEO at one point when we […]
I had the pleasure of appearing on episode #367 of Architecture Corner, “Fail fast, learn fast”, with Greger Wikstrand and Casimir Artmann. In the episode, we discuss learning, experiments, and the idea of “fail fast” in relation to the recent incident with Microsoft’s artificial intelligence chatbot, @TayandYou. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much […]
Take a couple of seconds and watch the clip in the tweet below: While it would be incredibly difficult to predict that exact outcome, it is also incredibly easy to foresee that it’s a possibility. As the saying goes, “forewarned is forearmed”. Being forewarned and forearmed is an important part of what an architect does. […]
Consider this Tweet for a moment. I’ll be coming back to it at the end. In my last post, I brought up Twitter’s rumored changes to the timeline feature as a poor example of customer awareness in connection with an attempt to innovate. The initial rumor set off a storm of protest that brought out […]
People of a certain age might remember the Road Runner cartoons from their childhood. In each episode, Wile E. Coyote suffered numerous accidents attempting to snare the bird using products from Acme, Inc. Aside from the opportunities for a product liability lawsuit, I always wondered why he didn’t just quit buying from them. Sometimes I […]
Value is a term that’s heard often these days, but I wonder how well it’s understood. Too often, it seems, value is taken to mean raw benefit rather than its actual meaning, benefit after cost (i.e. “bang for the buck”). An even better understanding of the concept can be had from Tom Cagley’s “Breaking Down […]
One of the themes that came up in the Vlerick Business School session on EA-roadmaps was around how long it takes to learn how to develop the skills needed to do enterprise-architecture – and how and why to learn them,…
By Andras Szakal, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, IBM U.S. Federal Changing business dynamics and enabling technologies In 2008, IBM introduced the concept of a “Smarter Planet.” The Smarter Planet initiative focused, in part, on the evolution of globalization … Continue reading →