Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
For some time now I have been promoting the idea that the practice of business architecture is not about creating blueprints and models but applying a set of tools and techniques to form broader perspectives, create deeper insight, and solve business problems. If business architecture is a practice then what is its portfolio of services? […]
The satellite model is an alternative representation of complex architectures that is propagated by me as a more helpful metaphor than layered models or complex graphs. It helps because it centres on the centre: the business or company domain. The model re-appears in many articles on my site, and in some representations by other authors: […]
Het bericht The satellite model verscheen eerst op Rob Vens.
What frameworks do we need to make sense of relationships, interdependencies and dynamics across the the whole of an enterprise? This is the third of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice – on how to hack and ‘smoosh-together’ existing frameworks to create…
Hashtags work. At least on Twitter. People sacrifice precious characters to tag their tweets. Why they work? They are emergent*. Nobody owns them. And they have the fate they deserve. A tagged micro-post becomes immediately a member of the set of all micro-posts having this tag. The main function is to direct the tweets to […]
The last year has been a very busy one, and for everyone who subscribed to this feed a rather poor one in terms of entries. The reason for the lack of postings is very simply down to the effort required to write a book!.
This was released in the UK a few weeks ago and will be released in the US later in November. We have a website for the book with its own blog that provides background to the ideas of storytelling and visual design:
http://storiesthatmovemountains.com/
We also have a Facebook page where we hope to build more of a community around the CAST model and gather feedback.
http://www.facebook.com/StoriesThatMoveMountains
In the last few days a good selection of pages from the book have been uploaded to Amazon to allow you to click inside and see the very visual style we used.
You can also go to ComputerWeekly.com research library and read chapter 2 in full (although a registration is required).
If you download the chapter and scroll right to the end you will find out how to buy the book with a 30% discount.
I’ll get back to blogging about IT, Enterprise Architecture and IT Strategy on this blog, so if you’re interested in the content for storytelling, visual design and improving your presentations please take a look at the facebook page and my other blog.
The last year has been a very busy one, and for everyone who subscribed to this feed a rather poor one in terms of entries. The reason for the lack of postings is very simply down to the effort required to write a book!.
This was released in the UK a few weeks ago and will be released in the US later in November. We have a website for the book with its own blog that provides background to the ideas of storytelling and visual design:
http://storiesthatmovemountains.com/
We also have a Facebook page where we hope to build more of a community around the CAST model and gather feedback.
http://www.facebook.com/StoriesThatMoveMountains
In the last few days a good selection of pages from the book have been uploaded to Amazon to allow you to click inside and see the very visual style we used.
You can also go to ComputerWeekly.com research library and read chapter 2 in full (although a registration is required).
If you download the chapter and scroll right to the end you will find out how to buy the book with a 30% discount.
I’ll get back to blogging about IT, Enterprise Architecture and IT Strategy on this blog, so if you’re interested in the content for storytelling, visual design and improving your presentations please take a look at the facebook page and my other blog.
Here’s an analogy for the so-called hierarchy of Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom DIKW).
Note that Information isn’t made solely from Data, Knowledge isn’t made solely from Information, and Wisdom isn’t made solely from Knowledge. See also my post on the Wisdom of the Tomato.
That’s enough analogies. Let me now explain what I think is wrong with this so-called hierarchy.
Firstly, the term “hierarchy” seems to imply that there are three similar relationships.
as well as implying some logical or chronological sequence
and quantitative relationships
But my objection to DIKW is not just that it isn’t a valid hierarchy or pyramid, but it isn’t even a valid schema. It encourages people to regard Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom as a fairly rigid classification scheme, and to enter into debates as to whether something counts as “information” or “knowledge”. For example, people often argue that something only counts as “knowledge” if it is in someone’s head. I regard these debates as unhelpful and unproductive.
A number of writers attack the hierarchical DIKW schema, and propose alternative ways of configuring the four elements. For example, Dave Snowden says that “knowledge is the means by which we create information out of data”. Meanwhile Tom Graves suggests we regard DIKW not as ‘layers’, but as distinct dimensions in a concept-space.
But I don’t see how any of these DIKW remixes escapes the most fundamental difficulty of DIKW, which is a naive epistemology that has been discredited since the Enlightenment. You don’t simply build knowledge out of data. Knowledge develops through Judgement (Kant), Circular Epistemology and Dialectic (Hegel), Assimilation and Accommodation (Piaget), Conjecture and Refutation (Popper), Proof and Refutation (Lakatos), Languaging and Orientation (Maturana), and/or Mind (Bateson).
What all of these thinkers share is the rejection of the Aristotelian idea of “one-way traffic” from data to knowledge, and an insistance that data must be framed by knowledge. Thus we may validate knowledge by appealing to empirical evidence (data), but we only pick up data in the first place in accordance with our preconceptions and observation practices (knowledge). Among other things, this explains why organizations struggle to accommodate (and respond effectively to) weak signals, and why they persistently fail to “connect the dots”.
And if architects and engineers persist in trying to build information systems and knowledge management systems according to the DIKW schema, they will continue to fall short of supporting organizational intelligence properly.
References
Updated 8 December 2012
What methodology-frameworks do we need for broad-scope enterprise-architecture in a human-services government-department? This is the second of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice – on how to hack and ‘smoosh-together’ existing frameworks to create a tool that will help people make sense…
Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets
“Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Dremel, and explain how it complements MapReduce-based computing.”
“After a long period of intense engineering effort and user feedback, we are very pleased, and proud, to announce the Cloudera Impala project. This technology is a revolutionary one for Hadoop users, and we do not take that claim lightly.
When Google published its Dremel paper in 2010, we were as inspired as the rest of the community by the technical vision to bring real-time, ad hoc query capability to Apache Hadoop, complementing traditional MapReduce batch processing. Today, we are announcing a fully functional, open-sourced codebase that delivers on that vision – and, we believe, a bit more – which we call Cloudera Impala.”
Obama Wins: How Chicago’s Data-Driven Campaign Triumphed | TIME.com
“On Nov. 4, a group of senior campaign advisers agreed to describe their cutting-edge efforts with TIME on the condition that they not be named and that the information not be published until after the winner was declared. What they revealed as they pulled back the curtain was a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.”
tags: obama datamining bigdata campaigns
In-memory DB tech from Microsoft — Hekaton:
“In-memory computing is a core element of Microsoft’s strategy to deliver a data platform that enables customers to analyze all types of data while also accelerating time to insight. Our approach to in-memory computing is to provide a complete portfolio for all application patterns, built into our existing products that enable rapid insights on any data, structured or unstructured. We’ve been delivering advanced in-memory technologies as part of SQL Server since 2010. Since then, we have shipped more than 1.5 million units to customers, making it the most pervasive data platform of its kind with in-memory technologies built in.
Furthering Microsoft’s commitment to deliver in-memory solutions as part of our data platform, today we are introducing Project codenamed “Hekaton,” available in the next major release of SQL Server. Currently in private technology preview with a small set of customers, “Hekaton” will complete Microsoft’s portfolio of in-memory capabilities across analytics and transactional scenarios. It will provide breakthrough performance gains of up to 50 times, and because it will be built into SQL Server, customers won’t need to buy specialized hardware or software and will be able to easily migrate existing applications to benefit from the dramatic gains in performance.”
Answer three ‘why’ questions: Abstract thinking can make you more politically moderate
“The researchers used techniques known to induce an abstract mindset in people, Preston said. Previous studies had shown that asking people to think broadly about a subject (with “why” rather than “how” questions, for example) makes it easier for them to look at an issue from different perspectives.
” ‘Why’ questions make people think more in terms of the big picture, more in terms of intentions and goals, whereas more concrete ‘how’ questions are focused on something very specific, something right in front of you, basically,” Preston said.
Previous research showed that abstract thinking enhances creativity and open-mindedness, but this is the first study to test its power to moderate political beliefs, Preston said.”
tags: thinking
Nate Silver-Led Statistics Men Crush Pundits in Election – Bloomberg
“Silver, the computer expert who gave Obama a 90 percent chance of winning re-election, predicted on his blog, FiveThirtyEight (for the number of seats in the Electoral College), that the president would receive 51 percent of the popular vote as he called each of the 50 states, including all nine battlegrounds.”
The Night A Computer Predicted The Next President : All Tech Considered : NPR
“Some milestone moments in journalism converged 60 years ago on election night in the run between Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democratic Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson. It was the first coast-to-coast television broadcast of a presidential election. Walter Cronkite anchored his first election night broadcast for CBS.
And it was the first time computers were brought in to help predict the outcome. That event in 1952 helped usher in the computer age, but it wasn’t exactly love at first sight…”
tags: elections prediction technology
Leadership 2.0: Are You An Adaptive Leader? http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2012/11/09/leadership-2-0-are-you-an-adaptive-leader/
What ontology-frameworks do we need, to make sense of the enterprise-architecture of a logistics-business? This is the first of five worked-examples of metaframeworks in practice – on how to hack and ‘smoosh-together’ existing frameworks to create appropriate tools to help…
If most of the frameworks we use in enterprise-architecture are ‘smooshed together’ from other frameworks, according to the needs of the context, then how do we do that ‘smooshing together’? More to the point, when and how and why should we…