Simplifying the Enterprise Canvas

The Enterprise Canvas is a model-type for use in enterprise-architecture, that can be used to describe any aspect of the enterprise, providing a consistent, unified view all the way from strategy to execution. But can we simplify it so as to build support for it in existing EA toolsets? The full specification for Enterprise Canvas […]

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 […]

Anti-clients, kurtosis-risks and public riots

In quite a few of my posts on enterprise-architecture, you may have seen two unfamiliar terms: anti-client, and kurtosis-risk. To see these two concepts in real-world action, and to get some understanding of how important they are in enterprise-architecture practice, you need look no further than the rioting that’s been taking place in London and […]

What is the enterprise in ‘the enterprise’?

When we talk about enterprise-architecture, what is ‘the enterprise’? For that matter, what is ‘enterprise’? Seems they’d be fairly foundational questions, yet most of the answers we see seem, well, kinda thin… If we hunt around on the net, we’ll find plenty of definitions for ‘enterprise’: “a business venture”, “a project or undertaking, typically one […]

Enterprise-architecture? – it’s all about story

Enterprise-architecture is all about story. The enterprise itself is a story; but the practice of enterprise-architecture is all about stories too. Let me tell you a story… There once was this half-crazed guy who used to go on about an even crazier idea that there might be a bit more to enterprise-architecture than just, well, […]

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 […]

Trust and the enterprise

Trust is the core of the enterprise in action. So why do so many businesses and other organisations seem to go out of their way to destroy that trust? And what can we as enterprise-architects do to make it work better?
This came up in a tweet yesterday from the Open Group Brazil’s Isabela Abreu, pointing a […]

Do enterprise-architects design the enterprise?

As the old phrase warns us, “vision without implementation is just hallucination”. That’s why all architects do some form of design, and ideally guide the implementation too. But do enterprise-architects design the enterprise? And if so, how do they do it? Or, for that matter, should they?
These are not trivial questions, as indicated well by […]

To understand shared-enterprise, look for the tattoos

People seem to struggle so much with the word ‘enterprise’ in ‘enterprise-architecture’. So often they seem to think it’s about technology. Or money.
But if you want to understand ‘enterprise’, look for the story.
And if you want to see where and how people really commit themselves to an enterprise, look for the tattoos.
That’s commitment…
And […]