Embracing Ignorance and Failure to Innovate

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What drives scientists to venture unflinchingly into the unknown without any guarantee of discovering the next big breakthrough that will generate headlines? Ignorance, according to Stuart Firestein, author of a compelling book, Ignorance: How It Drives Science. Firestein reveals that “ignorance propels scientific discovery” and asks the provocative question: “What if we cultivated ignorance instead of fearing it?” Even more stunning is that he says the most predictable thing about predictions is how often they […]

A question of organizational identity

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When the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded the Peace Prize to President Obama in 2009, commentators wondered which Obama was being honoured – the actual man who had been in office for less than a year and had as yet made little impact on world peace, o…

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Less Is More

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In my last post I have written about the concept to compare Enterprise Architecture with the Matrix. In short: free your mind and open up for all the possibilities. There is no reason to stay inside the boundaries provided by the various frameworks and…

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The Open Group SOA Governance Framework Becomes an International Standard

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The Open Group SOA Governance Framework is now an International Standard, having passed its six month ratification vote in ISO and IEC. According to Gartner, effective governance is a key success factor for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions today and in the future. Continue reading →

Architecture-by-definition is an anti-pattern. The goal of a…

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Architecture-by-definition is an anti-pattern.

The goal of a definition is to remove noise. 

You add another layer of noise when your definitions are model-specific sub-definitions for commonly understood terms. For example: service, product, capability, or system.

Special definitions introduce an additional cognitive load that easily outweighs the benefits of a more sophisticated model.

The Enterprise Architecture Matrix

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In my last post I have tried to express that I have given up on balance and I like it pretty much to be out of balance. It is kind of balance for me to be out of balance. No idea why, no idea where that leads to, no idea how long it lasts, but I accept the fact that I like it and that it gives me this perfect moment of being once with the flow. The flow I try to optimize with my daily work and which I tried to describe (fairly weak description so far) in my posts about GLUE Disease and Fixing Flows:

In this post I try to describe the way I approach Enterprise Architecture with my GLUE thinking in a different way. For that I will use a sequence from the movie Matrix and translate it into a dialogue between a Real Enterprise Architect and a Wannabe Enterprise Architect. For simplicity I use Wannabe and Real to point out who is speaking.


Wannabe: I know Enterprise Architecture.
Real: Show me.
Real: This is an Enterprise Architecture Activity. It follows the same basic rules than the Enterprise, rules like governance. What you must learn is that these rules are no different that the rules of a framework. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand? Then solve it, if you can.

[Wannabe tries to solve the problem]

Senior: Good. Adaptation, improvisation. But your weakness is not your technique.Project Manager: The Junior tries to solve an Enterprise Architecture problem.

Real: How did I solve it?
Wannabe: Your knowing more than I do.
Real: Do you believe that my being more experieced or knowing more has anything to do with my Enterprise Architecture framework technique in this place? You think that’s air you’re breathing now? Hah. Again.
[Wannabe really tries to solve it]
Project Manager: Jesus Christ, he’s fast. Take a look at his neural kinetics, they’re way above normal.
[Wannabe is close to solving it]
Real: What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to solve and start solving it.

Project Manager: I don’t believe it.

Wannabe: I know what you’re trying to do.
Real: I’m trying to free your mind, Wannabe, but I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it. You have to let it all go, Wannabe, fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind.

I truly hope that Enterprise Architects are waking up and walking through that door. The more the better. If you ask me then there is more to solve out there than we are ever able to sort, so if possible free your mind and enter the real Enterprise Architects leaving all the rules and boundaries behind you, but use them where reasonable.


given up on balance

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A blog post of Amanda Fenton about balance reminded me about a core concept I use in the space of GLUE and the change introduced via GLUE. In my post Fixing Flows I wrote about the joy of getting something to work and therefore eliminating a GLUE Disease. Maximizing the throughput in the GLUE Space in each and every domain is what I am aiming for and unfortunately the slowest domain decided upon the speed of the whole GLUE Space.

So what is my key to success here? I try to achieve balance (all domains do have almost the same throughput) by giving up on balance myself. Now that seems to be counter intuitive, but it is exactly what I do:
 
To achive balance I give up on balance!
 


The key aspect behind this thinking can be found in my way of tackling complexity:

  1. In the simple domain there is no need to give up balance.
  2. In the complicated domain there is limited need to give up on balance, but in a very controlled way.
  3. In the ambiguous domain there is permanent need to give up on balance, but action can be done one by one.
  4. In the Not-Known domain balance does not exist.

I like to use the analogy of walking:

  1. Standing on both feet in balance
  2. Decide where to go (“automatic” after the initial decision where to go)
  3. During the step out-of-balance
  4. continue with 1

Therefore to move the Architecture from one state to the other (As-Is -> Transition Architectures -> To-Be Architecture) the whole system gets out of balance all the time, because it is the only way to move. The whole GLUE Division Discovery is completely dedicated to out-of-balance behaviour, so the same flow as walking with GLUE terminology:

  1. GLUE Division Defence (As-Is)
  2. GLUE Division Destination (To-Be)
  3. GLUE Division Discovery (Transition, get to the target)
  4. continue with 1

In a perfectly running GLUE the next To-Be is close to automatic (or at least very fast), which translates into a system where the change between balance and non-balance is done so fast and automatic that everything is perfectly in flow. In most cases I find (or throw myself at) systems where the flow is out of balance, but the system stable (and unwilling to change). Here I give up my own balance (entering willingly Not-Known) to create a momentum to change.

And I do not know why, but this flow of events is kind of a Zen feeling for me: things happen unpredictable and real time around, with and due to me while I try to categorize (EPIC SCAN) them, set a direction (WISE SCAN) and support the execution (PACE SCAN). In most cases this require to be very flexible with the methods and tools and therefore I apply most of the time (80%) agile techniques. And here the technical tool I use is a whiteboard and markers.