The Cybernetic View

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#bizarch One of the Six Views of Business Architecture is the Management View or Cybernetic View. To understand this view, let’s start by asking what kind of thing management is.

One way of thinking about management is as a particular bundle of capabi…

Link Collection — June 17, 2012

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  • Data Scientist (n.): Person who is better at stati

  • Why We Need More IT Leadership, Not Less – Valuedance

    “We don’t really need executives to blog, friend, or tweet, but we do need them to understand how their current IT capabilities stack up against the competition; how IT-enabled changes to business processes and information could enhance the customer experience; and what it means to sponsor a project, drive IT adoption, and realize value from IT-enabled investments.  It’s time (actually way past time) for executives to assume personal accountability for understanding and managing IT and to cascade digital accountability and authority down through their organizations by incorporating IT-smarts in job descriptions and hiring criteria.”

    tags: cio leadership susancramm

  • Rafael Nadal demonstrates Babolat Play & Connect interactive tennis racquet

    This is ‘data-gadget-sports’ cool. And hey, my tennis game has nowhere to go but up.

    “But tech can also make us better athletes by providing us with information about our sporting performance – whether it’s shoes which log a basketball player’s jumps, or outfits which give dancers feedback about their moves. Tennis players could soon be getting in on the tech-helping-hand action with the introduction of an interactive racquet.”

    tags: tennis babolet data

  • The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization: An information graphics and visualization reading list

    Good list. I’ve read some — Roam, Tufte, Yau.

    Perhaps this one should be next for me:

    2. Nigel Holmes on Information Design, by Steven Heller (Amazon)The art director of The New York Times interviews one of the best infographics designers ever. 140 pages of insight.

    tags: information graphics visualization

  • When Venture Capitalists Become IT Consultants – Businessweek

    I see this with my clients. Establishing relationships with VCs is a part of a good listening post strategy

    “When Equinix (EQIX) Chief Information Officer Brian Lillie wants new business tools, he seeks advice from a venture capitalist, bypassing sources like IT consultants or the biggest names in enterprise software.

    He takes that unusual route because many of the latest innovations in cloud computing and software-as-a-service are coming from startups, not enterprise mainstays like Oracle (ORCL) or International Business Machines (IBM). Venture backers who get early looks at emerging companies as they consider cash infusions can be the best guides to the most promising new technology.

    tags: CIO CTO VC

  • Chevron explores the use of open source software called Hadoop to reduce costs. – The CIO Report – WSJ

    ““The ship collects ridiculous amounts of data,” said Walker. Chevron gathers information that includes five dimensions – the x and y coordinates of both the wave’s source and target – along with the time it was collected. The company uses Hadoop software to sort that data. It’s one step in more than 25 steps Chevron takes with the data to create a picture for engineers to use to locate oil reservoirs. Chevron uses a supercomputer to create models and simulations of the underground environment.”

    tags: chevron open source hadoop

  • Technology Business Management Council Creates New IT Benchmark – The CIO Report – WSJ

    Good idea. Share experience and metrics in commodity stuff. Free up CIO agenda for differentiating uses of technology.

    “A new non-profit group, launched today during a videoconference attended by over 500 members, says it wants to help CIOs by developing best practices and benchmarks they can use to run their IT organizations. The new group, the Technology Business Management Council, is an outgrowth of IT optimization services vendor Apptio, and inherits the vendor’s methodology for managing IT organizations. The organization’s governing council includes respected IT executives, including its co-chair, Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby, as well as First American Financial CIO Larry Godec and Clorox CIO Ralph Loura.

    The council is trying to address a problem CIOs have traditionally struggled to resolve– proving the value of the IT services their organizations provide, and making the case for IT investments the company needs to improve productivity and seize new market opportunities.”

    tags: IT management cio

  • How Starbucks is turning itself into a tech company | VentureBeat

    Similar to the creation of e-commerce groups in the 90s — mix of business and tech pros — organizations are now creating Digital Ventures for customer touching, revenue generating, business-technology (digital) capability. As e-commerce was led by tech-aware business exec (marketing), digital ventures are being run by Chief Digital Officers (CDO).

    This continues the bifurcation of classic IT into supporting and revenue lines.

    ‘Adam Brotman, formerly senior vice president of Starbucks Digital Ventures, was named to an entirely new executive role, chief digital officer. With the creation of the CDO role, all of Starbuck’s digital projects — web, mobile, social media, digital marketing, Starbucks Card and loyalty, e-commerce, Wi-Fi, Starbucks Digital Network, and emerging in-store technologies — were packaged together and placed under Brotman’s care.’

    tags: starbucks CDO

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Related posts:

  1. Link Collection — June 3, 2012
  2. Link Collection — June 10, 2012
  3. Link Collection — February 5, 2012

Customer-Driven Conversation

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Understanding how to handle customer needs and expectations is critical to success. From better service levels to lower costs to new, innovative product offerings, the pressure is on for organizations to go above and beyond. And, as consumerization continues its exponential growth, organizations need to find better ways to meet the ever-changing demands of their […]

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Big Data, ambiguity & the new era of Data R&D – active information

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My active information post this week meanders from a case  on the creation of VinSpin — a wine recommendation app — to ambiguity, and lands in (potentially) a new branch of corporate R&D: Data R&D. And no, I wasn’t testing out the effectiveness of VinSpin while writing. I’m tangential naturally.

Check out the post: Big Data, ambiguity & the new era of Data R&D – Input Output. Let me know your thoughts.
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On My Move To Consulting Services

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This is the official announcement.  After seven years of providing Enterprise Architecture services to my own company, Microsoft, I’ve decided to move into the Microsoft Consulting Services division and offer my Enterprise Architecture skills and experiences to other companies through Microsoft’s acclaimed world-wide consulting services division. 

Nick Malik… Enterprise Architect for Hire.

I’ve been a consultant before.  In fact, in the 26 years since I graduated from college, I’ve spent more time in consulting than as an employee.  In some ways, I’m coming home.  However, I’ve not consulted through Microsoft’s consulting division before.  I expect that customers of Microsoft expect different things of their Microsoft consultants than they do from their management consultants or software development consultants (the roles I’ve played before).  I have a transition to make, and in all honesty, I’m both excited and nervous about the change.  After all, I’ve been working in one environment (Microsoft IT) for the past eight years.  I expect that moving “outside the bubble” will be a move back into the real world… a world that has changed dramatically since I was last there.

Microsoft’s internal culture is all-encompassing.  First off, not many people have the opportunity to work for such a large IT division.  Microsoft IT has 4,000 full time employees and thousands more consultants and contractors.  There are offices in 100 countries, six large scale redundant data centers, and massive deployments of bleeding edge technology.  Microsoft IT is Microsoft “First and Best Customer,” which means that we get the first crack at new technology, whether it’s ready or not.  For example: Thousands of Microsoft employees are using Windows 8 for their normal working environment, and yes, our helpdesk supports Windows 8.  We have large teams, and many roles, and an IT budget in excess of $1B.  No, Microsoft IT is not a typical IT shop.

For all the excitement of working inside the cauldron of Microsoft, the noise inside the bubble drowns out the sounds of reality from outside the bubble. To counteract this,  I have always made an effort to reach out and speak directly to customers of Microsoft software and exchange practices.  I am a member of a small minority of IT architects who are engaged in that way.  Most of IT is focused on serving the large and needy community of companies known as Microsoft. 

That doesn’t mean that Microsoft IT is sheltered.  Far from it.  We have strong relationships with key partners and each of the large OEMs.  We work closely with some large customers as well.  Microsoft IT folks are part of those partnerships and there is continuous contact.  That said, the majority of contact between MSIT and the “outside” world is in direct support of our partners.  Let’s not forget that it is also valuable to speak with people who are NOT involved in making Microsoft successful.  To that end, I’ve been engaged to speak to folks from financial services, oil and gas, retail, government, and many more sectors.  Each wanted to know about some aspect of Microsoft’s internal architectural activities.  Each was willing to share with me their experiences, and their techniques, for developing Enterprise Architecture.

I always got a great deal of energy from these contacts.  In some sense, they were the highlights of any week where I got a chance to present to, and listen to, and learn from, our myriad customers from all over the world.  And that is why I’m making this move.  I’m going after the thing that I enjoy doing the most: providing value directly to companies and organizations around the world.

What does that mean for me?  It means that I will spend a good bit more time in airplanes and hotels.  It also means that I will be working continuously in new situations, trying to add value as an EA in different companies, in different ways.  It also means that I may get something started and not be around to see it come to full fruit.  I’ll miss that part. 

What does that mean for you?  If you are a company or agency that needs an Enterprise Architect, and you’d like to have me visit and spend some time with you, please drop me a line through this website and I’ll see what I can do to arrange things. 

I’m hanging out my shingle.  Open for business.

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6 Rules of Thumb for Enterprise Architecting

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What rules of thumb guide your EA efforts?(photo credit: Sanna R) This is the second half of my 12 heuristics for Enterprise Architecting.  I have already started using some of them to guide me in EA exercises, for example heuristic #7.  And…