Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
This started out as a photo essay on winter. And then I read an article that disturbed me. I’m a strong supporter of rewilding. I think organizations like Rewilding Britain do great work, so it may seem strange that I was unhappy with this article about them. Near the beginning there’s a quote from George Monbiot […]
Back in November we said goodbye to a lovely guy and one of the finest musicians I’ve ever played with, Ifor Baynes. Most people who’ll read this have probably never heard of him. Would that the world were different. Ifor actually died in April but this was a memorial organized by some of his closest […]
Sometimes, what seemed to be a really good idea just doesn’t turn out that way in the end. In my opinion, a lack of a systems approach to problem solving makes that type of outcome much more likely. Simplistic responses to issues that fail to deal with problems holistically can backfire. Such ill-considered solutions not […]
This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 411, features Tom’s essay on Servant Leadership (which I highly recommened), John Quigley on managing requirements as a part of product management, a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Organizations as Systems – ‘Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the […]
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. […]
Several people reacted to my last blog with the reasonable question of how we can maintain/retain the sensation of enchantment on the bleak, depressing days when everything seems to be wrong with the world (or at least our own bit of it). I have no easy answer to this (if there were one, it probably […]
How does systems thinking really apply to enterprise architectureOne of the things I like most about the festive season is the chance to reset – there’s space and time to think about what happened in the previous year, what the future might bring, and most of all – time to spend with the special people in your…
Architecting change is a holistic, systemic, big picture approach! It is holistic in the sense that it covers information about everything, including infrastructure, information, process, knowledge, organization design, skills, and resources. This is an ambitious claim, but it is the information that is united through EA, which then makes it easier to manage the…
This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 373, features Tom’s essay on #NotImplementedNoValue and a Form Follows Function installment on simplistic mental models. Tom and I discuss my post “All models may be wrong, but it’s not a contest to see how wrong you can be”, talking about cognitive […]
The one thing you can be sure of is that nothing is dependent on only one thing. Michael Feathers‘ tweet last week brought this to mind: Too often we construct simplistic mental models that fail to account for outcomes that are possible, but inconvenient for us in some way. As Aneel noted while discussing OODA […]
The most important thing to learn about management and governance is knowing when and how to manage or govern and more importantly, when not to. The story is told about a very new and modern penal facility, the very epitome of security and control. Each night, precisely at 11:00 PM, the televisions were shut off […]
Connective thinking ability cited as key trait in newly published Isaac Asimov essay on Creativity: But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be illuminating. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selection, independently created by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. There is […]