Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? In the first post in this series, we looked at the concept of four distinct asset-dimensions: physical: physical ‘thing’ – independent, tangible, transferrable, alienable virtual: data, information, idea – […]
What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? In the previous post in this series, we looked at the concept of four distinct asset-dimensions: Physical, Virtual, Relational and Aspirational. The same dimensions carry right the […]
What are the different types of assets that we need to deal with in an enterprise-architecture? What implications arise across the architecture from the differences between these types? [I know I usually write too long, so as a kind of trial-run, I’m splitting up this original long-post into four smaller ones: please let me know […]
Have been struggling hard for the past few days with a truly brilliant challenge from Bulgarian enterprise-architect Ivo Velitchkov, when he dropped by for a visit near here over the weekend. And I’d have to admit I’m no nearer solving it as yet. Hmm… His point is this: there’s a huge body of knowledge – […]
How do we prove the value of our work? How we defend that value against unprincipled attack? These are real questions that we all need to face, especially in inherently-’unprovable’ disciplines such as enterprise-architecture. So let’s put these questions into practice. Several people have asked me for a detailed worked-example of the sensemaking-technique of context-space mapping […]
How can we ensure that the ideas and models that we use are appropriate to the context? What methods can we use to evaluate new ideas? Perhaps more to the point, how do we protect ourselves from ideas that won’t fit in our architecture-ecosystem? This extends the previous post on ‘Coping with the toad-in-the-road‘, where […]
Folks, we have an important issue on terminology that we need to address. In two comments to my previous post, Dave Snowden has made it clear that he objects to any reference to the term ‘Cynefin‘ that does not conform exactly to his specification for that term. This includes any usage of the term ‘Cynefin-categorization’, […]
What is simple, complex, complicated, or chaotic? And from whose perspective? For a long time now I’ve been using those context-categories – often referred to as the ‘Cynefin-categorization’ – with a straightforward cross-map to levels of repeatability, somewhat analogous to the states or phases of matter: Although we do need to be wary of misusing […]
“What would be the smallest service? Did anyone ever look for the/a boundary condition of a service?” – an important pair of questions from Jan van Til in an earlier comment here. The first question is a bit difficult, because the only correct answer would be that ultimately it’s right down at the sub-cellular level – […]
Following on from the previous work on EA metamodels, I keep coming back to those two questions from Graeme Burnett: for everything in a context, we need to be able to ask “tell me about yourself?” and “tell me what you’re associated with?”. That focus does help to keep things simple here… (Please remember that […]
I’ve been writing a lot recently about metamodels for enterprise-architecture and the like: but what’s the point? Why bother? Why all this fuss about something that’s way too technical to be of interest to almost anyone in the real workaday world? The real point behind all of this discussion (and there’ve been some really valuable comments […]
In the various previous posts about EA metamodels, we’ve been exploring some of the detailed structures for toolsets and the like at a very, very low-level. But what’s the big-picture here? What’s the point? So let’s step back for a moment, and look at real-world EA practice. Much of our work consists of conversations with […]