EA metamodel – a possible structure

What would this ‘generic modelling metamodel’ look like? And how could we implement it? This continues the work from previous posts on this theme, such as ‘More detail on EA metamodel‘ and ‘EA metamodel and method‘. The legal bit: The aim is that this should contribute towards an open standard, and should not be used […]

EA metamodel and method

How would this EA metamodel actually work? And why would we need it, given that we have more than enough frameworks and models already? This follows on from the earlier post ‘More detail on EA metamodel‘, and in particular part of a comment there from Stuart Boardman: I completely agree that method and governance should […]

More detail on EA metamodel

Moving on to more detail on that EA metamodel. (By the way, a quick thank-you to Nic Plum and Sally Bean for really helpful peer-reviews on this. ) The legal bit: There’s a heck of a lot of unpaid work that’s gone into this, and also a lot of my own ‘prior art’ on these themes, […]

IT-centrism, business-centrism, capability and process

My earlier post ‘IT-centrism is killing enterprise-architecture‘ seemed to touch a nerve with quite a few folks: tetradian: [post] IT-centrism is killing enterprise-architecture http://bit.ly/p8kfqf (thx @dougnewdick) #entarch tonia_ries: The only thing that should be at the center of any business is the customer. @krcraft @tetradian krcraft: Agree, if staff also inc. as customers RT @tonia_ries […]

Back to the roots for EA toolset metamodels

Time to get back to the themes from the post ‘More on that enterprise-architecture ‘help wanted’‘, with a focus on toolsets and metamodels. The usual approach to toolsets – just about any kind of toolset, as far as I can tell – is to describe the overall context, knock up a metamodel, and then build […]

What I do and how I do it

What do I do, and how do I do it? What’s the nature of my work, and the methods that I use? And for that matter, why? That’s perhaps the shortest summary to a request by Anthony Draffin, in a comment to my previous post ‘Not quite bus-pass day‘: On a selfish note… It’s apparent that […]

More on that enterprise-architecture ‘help needed’

Given the responses to my previous post ‘Guess I could do with some help here…‘, seems it’d be useful if I clarify a bit more what kind of help I most need. (Or we need, rather, as an industry and discipline: probably the only ‘I’-part here is that I seem to be one of the […]

Guess I could do with some help here…

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been kinda pouring out the posts on enterprise-architecture and the like, over the past few weeks or so… (A few people have complained about the overload, and probably with good reason, too! Oh well. My apologies, anyway.) What’s happening for me is that it seems all of the work […]

Two kinds of Why

What is ‘Why?’ And why, anyway? “Oh no, not again“, do I hear you cry? Actually, it’s not as bad as that: it’s not going to be yet another of those long tedious technical posts – honest! (It is a sort-of technical question, I’ll admit. And, in the event, quite long. But interesting to just […]

Unravelling the anatomy of Archimate

The Archimate notation aims to be the standard to be used by everyone in enterprise-architecture and related fields. But what exactly is its anatomy – its underlying structure? And if it’s aimed at enterprise-architecture, what is it about that structure that makes it seem only to support IT-architecture, and in such an awkwardly IT-centric way?
(Apologies, folks, […]

The is-ness of business

What do enterprise-architects do?
At first glance it’s not an easy question. We talk a lot, with many different people, about lots of different things; but we don’t seem to do much. We tend to use a jawbreaking jargon, about narratives of knowledge, terminology, taxonomy, and things with a 2.0 in the name; we mumble about […]

Rethinking the layers in enterprise-architecture

Still plodding away on ideas for a systematic process to translate a business-model in Business Model Canvas down into real-world architecture and implementation. (This links up with quite a few previous posts, such as ‘More on business-models‘, ‘Enterprise-architecture – let’s keep it simple‘ and ‘Is Archimate too IT-centric for enterprise-architecture?‘)
[Note: this is a work-in-progress post, […]