Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
As we start to navigate our way into this topic of mastery, I’d like to explore attention and perception further. Louis Agassiz became known well beyond his own field for teaching observation, and many of his students relay similar stories of how he imbued this … Continue reading →
Six years ago I posted a blog article called Solution Architect Skills Idea. At the time, I was a practicing Solution Architect pushing the boundaries to mature the Solution Architect discipline. I built the Solution Architect Skills Assessment to help organize the skills I felt were necessary to be a world class Solution Architect and…
Guest Post by David Nardoni The responsibility of conducting mobile forensic investigations in the workplace should fall in the lap of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Unfortunately, 58% of organizations do not have a CISO, according to our recent Global State of Information Security Survey of 9,300 senior executives. Often the CIO is tasked with leading efforts to collect evidence when foul play is suspected. Fetching data from mobile devices is fraught with challenges […]
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The device ecosystem is growing faster with the ready availability of gadgets for personal and professional use. The application landscape is on the climb with the addition of Cloud, social, mobile and sensor services. Amongst the most captivating technologies, the Cloud technology stands out. Continue reading →
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…