Value of EA

6 years, 3 months ago

Managing the fundamental interconnectedness of things with Enterprise Architecture

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Enterprise Architecture is much more than a list of components. Too often one sees diagrams in slide decks that are either simple lists, a layered view of domains, or a graphical hierarchy. And these are supposed to represent the ‘Architecture’? These visualisations are good to use to inform on the scope and context, but they […]

6 years, 10 months ago

Strategic Enterprise Architecture provides Intelligence, Analysis and Knowledge

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Written by Adrian Campbell A good analogy for an Enterprise Architecture capability is to think of it as the equivalence to an intelligence corps in the military. Military Leaders and business decision makers will use this Strategic Intelligence capability to: Know what their current capabilities are Know the capabilities of the enemy (competitors) are Understand […]

9 years, 10 months ago

Cognitive Dissonance

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I was reading this today: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/ea-matters/is-there-an-enterprise-architect-paradox-surely-is-57728?rss=1 It is a good analysis of the cognitive dissonance between what Enterprise Architects should be doing and the role and situation they often actually find themselves in. The term Enterprise Architect has been hijacked for far too long. An Enterprise Architect should indeed be a senior leadership role, ideally reporting to […]

10 years, 1 month ago

Intersection and branding

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I’m reading a great new book called Intersection: How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap Between Business, Technology, and People by Milan Guenther The book discusses modern Enterprise Architecture perspectives like the Outside In approach and provides a holistic design lead approach that is focus more on the customer than on the underlying applications, technology and infrastructure. […]

10 years, 3 months ago

How to measure Enterprise Architecture

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What is Enterprise Architecture Enterprise Architecture is essentially a strategic planning discipline for ensuring that all the strategies of an enterprise are well executed. How should we measure it and how it is performing? First it’s best to clearly understand what Enterprise Architecture is and who it is for. Enterprise Architecture bridges the gap between […]

11 years, 28 days ago

Going from just good enough to being great

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I recently saw a Forrester blog entry from George Colony at: http://blogs.forrester.com/george_colony/12-08-27-enterprise_architects_for_dummies_ceos And recently I’ve been reading an interesting book called Good to Great by James Collins. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great The Forrester blog talks about succeeding with realizing the business strategy by involving enterprise architects, whereas the Good to Great book doesn’t mention enterprise architects but just talks […]

11 years, 8 months ago

The purpose of Enterprise Architecture

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I’m often confronted by solution architects, IT and technical architects who don’t understand what Enterprise Architecture is all about. They usually misinterpret enterprise architecture from their own perspective as some kind of system design of ‘enterprise’ scale IS/IT systems and become frustrated when they discover that it is really something else. It often turns out that […]

11 years, 10 months ago

Strategy Planning and Enterprise Architecture – dealing with the devil in the detail

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Enterprise Architecture is all about supporting strategic planning and business transformation activities, although many organisations seem to almost wilfully forget that this is one of the main purposes of Enterprise Architecture if not the most important one. A business strategy is a long-term plan of changes for the whole enterprise which will address things like offering new products an […]

12 years, 4 months ago

The Viable System Model is the missing theory behind Enterprise Architecture

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I am currently involved with the EAST group (an outreach group of SCiO http://www.scio.org.uk/ ) which is looking at the overlap between Enterprise Architecture and System Thinking, and in particular the Viable System Model (VSM). The Viable System Model has been around for many years, coming out of Stafford Beer’s work  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Stafford_Beer This diagram looks complex at […]

12 years, 9 months ago

Enterprise Architecture as the Office of the CEO

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We are used to the idea of a Programme/Project Management Office (PMO) but often organisations fail to understand (or perhaps deliberately misunderstand) what the Enterprise Architecture function does. I propose that the Enterprise Architecture function is, in effect, an Office of the CEO, or an Office of the CEO and Strategic Change Management. The book […]

12 years, 9 months ago

Making Strategy Work with Enterprise Architecture

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If you want to execute a business strategy then you’ll need an Enterprise Architecture function. Enterprise architecture (EA) is about change – strategic change in an enterprise. But not exogenous change – reactive change forced on the enterprise by outside exigencies – although that sort of change and those external forces may be taken into […]

13 years, 27 days ago

Smart Enterprise Architecture

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Organisations need a new paradigm. In order to survive, old dogs are going to have to learn new tricks.  They need to start fundamentally thinking about how to change the way in which they innovate, think and make decisions. To allow future operations to be more efficient, c-level executives and senior managers will need more accurate […]