Declaring the assumptions
Moving onward with this exploration of how I’m reframing the way I work, a key part is around identifying the constraints of that work: where and how the tools work, and – perhaps even more important – being clear about…
taxonomy
Organisation and enterprise as ‘how’ and ‘why’
What’s the relationship between organisation and enterprise? In particular, how would we work with that relationship in enterprise-architecture? This one’s a follow-on from both ‘Fractals, naming and enterprise-architecture‘ and ‘Organisation and enterprise‘, and, more specifically, is a response to Len…
Fractals, naming and enterprise-architecture
What naming do we need, when we’re doing architectures for every part of the enterprise? Yeah, I know this is another one that I go on and on about, but it’s just too bad: we need to resolve this one –…
Organisation and enterprise
What is an enterprise? Perhaps more specifically, what is ‘the enterprise’ in enterprise-architecture? (Quick TL;DR summary: in enterprise-architecture, ‘the enterprise’ is not the same as ‘the organisation’, and is always larger in scope than just ‘the organisation’. Confusing those two terms, or treating…
The importance of ‘also’
“Every business is an information business.” That was the first line of an infographic I saw this morning. And yep, no doubt about it: every business is indeed an information business. But there’s a rather important word that’s missing there: also.…
Definitions on capability
This one’s really straightforward: it’s just a follow-up to a public request on Twitter by Bizzdesign consultant Bas van Gils: basvg: I am looking for definitions of these concepts, please help: capability, capability based planning, capability increment, capability map I’ve…
If it’s not AE, it’s not EA
What is enterprise-architecture? According to just about everything you’ll see at present, from books to so-called ‘standards’ to conferences to recruiters’ job-adverts, it’s kinda something to do with IT, sorta, ish… uh, kinda dunno, really, but it’s sort-of IT and…
Financial-architecture and enterprise-architecture
“There’s no way we can do it”, he said with a sigh, brushing back his thinning hair and then resting his hand against his cheek, shaking his head in frustration. “We can’t make the business-case work: there’s no way round…
On dubious definitions
How can we make sure that our definitions actually link up properly with the context they purport to describe? How can we test our definitions for validity and meaningfulness in the respective context? Perhaps rather too often, amidst those endless…
On not eating the elephant
How do we make sense of an enterprise? Is analysis the best or only way to do it? That now long-running LinkedIn thread about capability, function, service and process that I referenced in a couple of recent posts just keeps rolling…
Price, value and ‘the market’
How do we make sense of ‘value’ in enterprise-architecture – particularly when we introduce the economists’ notion of ‘the market’ into the picture? In the midst of the same LinkedIn discussion on capability and suchlike, mentioned in the previous post…
Product and service
What’s the difference between product and service? And in what ways does that difference affect the various aspects of enterprise-architectures? This question came up as a follow-on to an unusually-good LinkedIn discussion, started on The Enterprise Architecture Network list by…