Solution Architecture

2 months, 3 days ago

Should Security Architecture remain separate from other Architecture disciplines?

In my travels, I have come to observe that many organizations separate out security architecture from other architectures. Does this make sense? Large organizations often have governance practices such as an Architecture Review Board (ARB) yet defer the system quality attribute of security to another entity. Does this beg the question of whether security professionals […]

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2 months, 12 days ago

Revisiting Defense in Depth…

Today, I want to question the sage wisdom of Security Architecture Professionals. The notion of defense-in-depth may need to be revisited. More security doesn’t necessarily mean better security. In fact, the current strategy of most organizations—layering on many different technologies—is not only proving ineffective, it is overly complex and expensive. This notion needs better enterprise […]

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2 months, 18 days ago

Looking for Case Studies on Polyglotism

As a Gartner analyst, I have the opportunity to interact with many enterprise architecture teams looking to improve their approach to architecture governance. The one software development trend I am seeing grow without an accompanying architecture viewpoint is the rise of polygotism. In any software development lifecycle, time to develop software is a dominant factor […]

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2 months, 19 days ago

Can Document Review Inquiry help improve Enterprise Architecture Outcomes?

Do you know what a Document Review Inquiry is? Sadly, I didn’t know what one was until I joined Gartner. After interacting with Gartner analysts over dozens of years while working at various Fortune 100 enterprises, I never came to appreciate how much more effective I could have been if I only had known about […]

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7 months, 10 days ago

Strategic Tunnel Vision

  Change and innovation are topics that have been prominent on this blog over the last year. In fact, Greger Wikstrand and I have traded a total of twenty-six posts (twenty-seven counting this one) on the subject. Greger’s last post, “Successful digitization requires focus on the entire customer experience – not just a neat app” […]

1 year, 1 month ago

The Hidden Cost of Cheap – UX and Internal Applications

Why would anyone worry about user experience for anything that’s not customer-facing? This question was the premise of Maurice Roach’s post in the Zühlke blog, “Empathise with your users or you won’t solve their problems”: Bring up the subject of user empathy with some engineers or product owners and you’ll probably hear comments that fall […]

1 year, 2 months ago

Innovation – What’s Old can be New Again

There’s an old rhyme about what a bride should wear for luck on her wedding day: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”. While reading an article on the origins of the US highway system, I thought about this rhyme in relation to the concept of innovation. Part of that article related the US […]

3 years, 2 months ago

The Enterprise Architect of Hamelyn

Stakeholder ConcernEnterprise FocusProject Focus
The city of Hamelyn is plagued with rats.This indicates a serious problem with the “Public Health and Hygiene” capability.We just need a quick project to eliminate the rats. So we buy some “Eliminate Creature” capability from an external vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the rats.Real business problem has not been addressed. Let’s now push on with the next phase of solving the problem.Project successful.

The Pied Piper is too expensive.We need a careful transition plan while we build an in-house capability.Let us immediately renegotiate our contract with the vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the children.It turns out that the Pied Piper can reuse his “Eliminate Creature” capability for other purposes.!*!?**!
Which Role?Enterprise Architect?
Strategic Procurement?		Solution Architect?
Tactical Procurement?

See also my article “Requirements Engineering as if Stakeholders Mattered” (Requirenautics Quarterly, Issue 29, August 2003, pdf)

3 years, 2 months ago

The Enterprise Architect of Hamelyn

Stakeholder ConcernEnterprise FocusProject Focus
The city of Hamelyn is plagued with rats.This indicates a serious problem with the “Public Health and Hygiene” capability.We just need a quick project to eliminate the rats. So we buy some “Eliminate Creature” capability from an external vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the rats.Real business problem has not been addressed. Let’s now push on with the next phase of solving the problem.Project successful.

The Pied Piper is too expensive.We need a careful transition plan while we build an in-house capability.Let us immediately renegotiate our contract with the vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the children.It turns out that the Pied Piper can reuse his “Eliminate Creature” capability for other purposes.!*!?**!
Which Role?Enterprise Architect?
Strategic Procurement?		Solution Architect?
Tactical Procurement?

See also my article “Requirements Engineering as if Stakeholders Mattered” (Requirenautics Quarterly, Issue 29, August 2003, pdf)

3 years, 2 months ago

Integration – Send Me a Message

I recently had the opportunity to work on a project where we were bringing in a vendor product that required data integration with a number of our client’s in house transaction applications. We needed to determine how the internal applications would integrate with the new product.  I figured the timing was right to build on […]