“Distance…is the one true enemy…”

Gregory Brown tweeted a great series on the problem of distance last week: It’s amazing how much information can be conveyed in nine tweets. It’s amazing how many aspects of a very complex socio-technical undertaking, software development, are affected by this concept of distance. I would argue that this concept of distance applies likewise to […]

Technology-adoption, Wardley-maps and Bimodal-IT

By now, most people in enterprise-architecture will know Gartner’s beloved ‘Bimodal IT’ as ‘the gift that goes on giving’ – giving of wry laughter, that is, as the Gartner consultants seemingly each queue up, one after another, to make ever-more-futile

The Open Group Launches the Open Business Architecture (O-BA) Preliminary Standard Part I to Support Business Transformation

The first release of a three part standard designed to improve alignment, governance and integration between the different aspects of business transformation projects The Open Group, the vendor-neutral IT consortium, has today launched the Open Business Architecture (O-BA) Preliminary Standard … Continue reading

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 403

This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 403, features Tom’s essay on Agile practices at scale, Kim Pries on transformations, and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “NPM, Tay, and the Need for Design”. Although the specific controversies have died down since we recorded the segment, […]

Empty architecture

As architects we often end up in strategy execution tasks that place us in or near the upper management. The most dangerous thing is that we actually lose the specific skills and value add of our profession. It is not uncommon to see architects creating PowerPoint or similar where when you remove the word ‘architecture’ … Continue reading Empty architecture

The Scissors of Science

Three centuries ago the average life expectancy in Europe was between 33 and 40 years. Interestingly, 33 was also the average life expectancy in the Palaeolithic era, 2.6 million years ago. What is that we’ve got in the last three centuries that we hadn’t got in all the time before? Well, science! Science did a […]

Architecting the shadows

In enterprise-architecture, we’ve long known about the importance of shadow-IT – the place where much of business IT-innovation comes from, yet also presents organisational risks if not managed appropriately. Yet whilst talking with Pierre [I never did catch his surname –

Enterprise Architecture and Wardley Maps

I had an interesting conversation recently about the use of Wardley maps as part of an Enterprise Architecture and Digital Transformation programme recently. I had looked at using Wardley maps some time ago but now I think it is a good time to incorporate their use into normal Enterprise Architecture/ Business Architecture work. They are […]