Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Organizations that predate the digital economy need to architect themselves to flourish in it. According to the The MIT Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR), they (more…)
The post Business Architecture is Critical for Organizati…
Enterprise Architecture is a young, immature discipline that produces models to guide the development of an enterprise. It is generally recognised to date back to the late 1980s or early 1990s and the work of Zachman, Spewak and others though it really took-off in the late 1990s and early years of the 21st Century. But methodological disciplines do not emerge complete […]
If we look at current IT-trends it is easy to say everybody has heard of Big Data. Although there are some known successes (for example US retailer Target which through its extensive data could predict pregnancy faster than the involved person) many compiling companies spend millions (or even billions) of dollars hoarding big data, without properly using it at all. According to Gartner, 85% of Fortune 500 organizations won’t be able to exploit their big data usefully in 2015. Now the key to using data at all, is knowing that you don’t necessarily need all data. As long as you know which data can be useful to your company – and maybe even more important – WHERE it is useful within your company, you don’t need to spend half of your budget on stacking information.
For those of us that have been practicing SOA for over a decade, it’s surprising that there’s so much interest in microservices. In fairness microservices don’t look like the vendor play that was early SOA in the early noughties. But experienced SOA pr…
For those of us that have been practicing SOA for over a decade, it’s surprising that there’s so much interest in microservices. In fairness microservices don’t look like the vendor play that was early SOA in the early noughties. But experienced SOA pr…
When I think of diversity usually I think of HR and long awareness meetings and a realisation that a heterogenous environment helps everyone, however diversity goes beyond this. Now before I talk about the new hype that is built on diversity I want to focus a bit on the ever existing tension between diversity and … Continue reading The hype to end all hypes 🙂 →
A while back, I wrote in the blog post ArchiMate is overrated (and underrated) that using ArchiMate doesn’t really have that much added value for communicating simple, high-level views to stakeholders (users, management), but its structure does bring advantages that enables us to … Continue reading →
This article by Selvyn Wright provides a good explanation about the use of Building Blocks in EA: http://www.irmuk.co.uk/articles/Selvyn_Wright_%20Building_Blocks.pdf?
After 30 years of talking about this, I am still shocked at the predominant misconception that the Rows of Zachman Framework define “level of detail,” or “waterfall,” or “decomposition.” This is just not true. The Rows of the Zachman Framework define TRANSFORMATION, NOT decomposition. Level of detail is defined in the HEIGHT of each cell (or Row), NOT the height of the Framework itself. While I originally I called the Rows “Perspectives,” the underlying theory that defines the Rows is the philosophical concept of Reification.
One day in Houston, I was doing a seminar for some folks and was describing the Perspectives that constitute the second dimension (the Rows) of classification depicted by my Framework and some guy in the back of the room said, “Ohhh! That’s reification!” I said, “Re-if-a-what???” I never heard the word before. I said, “spell it for me” “R-e-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n.”
It turns out that “reification” is a word that comes out of Philosophy. The etymology of the word is from the Latin, where “RE” means “thing” so “RE – IFICATION” would mean “Thing-ifcation,” making a thing, an instantiation, out of an idea that you can think about such that the thing (instantiation) bears a resemblance with the idea that you start with. Plato and Aristotle and apparently some assemblage of early Philosophers knew that an idea that you can think about is one thing but the instantiation of that idea is a totally different thing… and if you want the instantiation to bear any resemblance with the idea, the idea has to go through a well-known set of transformations.
Reification (Rows of the Zachman Framework):
If the idea goes through this set of transformations, the Instantiation will bear resemblance with the idea. Reification is likely the more fundamental definition of the Rows of the Framework since it has been employed by humanity for several thousands of years. However, there is a strong correlation between Reification and the Perspectives as I identified them from the older disciplines of Architecture and Construction and Engineering and Manufacturing. This should not come as a great shock… there is a natural classification structure, it is manifest consistently in any application or discipline.
Mike Rosen has written an interesting article about complexity and EA. He says: “There are many different reasons that organizations do architecture, but if we distil them all down to the essentials, architecture is fundamentally about managing complexity and change through structure…. change is just one part of the complexity that we have to manage…
For decades, CIOs have been fighting for a seat at the executive table. Fighting to be heard, fighting to be a trusted advisor to the CEO, fighting to be regarded as a true C-level participant. It hasn’t been until the last few years that cybersecurity breaches, the sprint toward business digitization, the emphasis on the customer experience and a service-driven economy have thrust the CIO into the spotlight.
In many of these cases, CIOs are lucky to have really smart people backing them up along the way. Enterprise architects (EAs) have typically been the CIO’s right-hand man (or woman), fighting alongside their boss to have their strategic insights heard and their version of innovation understood. Now that digitization is widely recognized as being essential to innovation, growth and the capacity to readily compete, CIOs are well on their way to becoming firmly embedded in charting the direction of the business. This should serve as a clarion call to all EAs. It’s your time – CIOs and other leaders are looking to you.
In a recent Wired article, Jason Bloomberg encouraged Chief Digital Officers to “invite enterprise architects to the digital party.” While we’d certainly agree that enterprise architects need to be connected to every branch and stakeholder in the organization – the CEO, CFO, CIO (of course), CDO, etc. – and provide a unique value to each, we’re not convinced they need to wait for their formal invitation to arrive. A few words of advice to architects that will ensure their visibility, effectiveness and ability to carpe diem:
Know your allies and stand on their shoulders. Although much is being made about the digital transformation of the business, let’s be honest – this is the net evolution of something that has been happening for quite some time. A new-fangled Chief Digital Officer can certainly be a valuable relationship to nurture, but remember to dance with the one that brought you. In many companies, it’s the CIO that is your most longstanding ally. They can ingratiate you with the CDO and lend proven, reliable advocacy to your work. We’re not saying it’s a territory war, but it’s important to be aware of where your strongest connections exist.
Be confident in your expertise. Not everyone will understand what you do. Some people might see you as a geek, like the picture that Bloomberg paints in his piece. But none of that matters, because you’re delivering intelligence that counts and offering a path to real business results. It may take some explaining, but we’ve never seen a case where the light bulb didn’t eventually go off for executives looking to understand the purpose and impact of EA. Go about solving problems, not worrying about evangelizing the tools of your trade under the pretense that people need to understand them in order to trust your contributions.
We like the way that Joe McKendrick describes your role in a recent ZDNet post, with a tip of the hat to John Zachman. Zachman postulates that enterprise architects should be like doctors diagnosing ailments: “The fundamental problem in the enterprise community is nobody is doing the diagnosis, they’re just taking x-rays. If people think that enterprise architecture is a practice of building models, that’s like taking x-rays. What the enterprise architect ought to be doing is reading the models, figuring out what the problem is, then prescribing three, or five, or 20 possible solutions.” Seize the moment to be a figurative doctor.
Evolve the EA terminology. It’s time to turn the page and start talking about what EAs provide in a way that everyone understands. At Troux, we’ve taken to calling it enterprise intelligence because we think it more accurately represents the results that come out of our solutions. Bloomberg calls the EA team the Center of Digital Excellence (CODE); that’s pretty catchy too. Whatever it takes to help business leaders understand that you’re up to speed with the business and in lockstep with business objectives. Don’t let nomenclature drag you down.
At a baseline, don’t sit back and wait for an invitation. Take action, step up to the table and prove that you can help steer the business in a positive, profitable direction. It’s the era of the connected enterprise. Decisions you inform and help make for one part of the business ripple throughout the entire organization, with their impacts felt far and wide. It’s time for EAs to seize the moment and show how they can help diagnose and solve the next wave of digital business challenges. It’s your time.
Check out this short video and download our whitepaper, The Power of Enterprise Intelligence, to learn more about how our solutions help decision-makers take a step back to see the big picture to understand exactly where they should be investing in their business.
Time to get back on the toolsets trail… First, though, I’ll let Phil Beauvoir have his own rant about the current state of supposed ‘EA-toolsets’ – as per a series of Tweets he pushed out a few days ago: Better…