On The CIO’s Top Challenges
There are many challenges that CIO’s are facing in today’s cloudy, jargony, swirling maelstrom of Information Technology. But isn’t there something missing in the conversation that totally supersedes these challenges?
We call that government
I was reading this post about QANTAS having to stop on the way from Dallas to Brisbane to refuel several times since starting the “nonstop” service. The service is “direct” from DFW to Sydney – which in the strained parlance of the travel industry mean…
We call that government
I was reading this post about QANTAS having to stop on the way from Dallas to Brisbane to refuel several times since starting the “nonstop” service. The service is “direct” from DFW to Sydney – which in the strained parlance of the travel industry mean…
We call that government
I was reading this post about QANTAS having to stop on the way from Dallas to Brisbane to refuel several times since starting the “nonstop” service. The service is “direct” from DFW to Sydney – which in the strained parlance of the travel industry mean…
The Topography of Enterprise Architecture
#entarch A lot of the terminology of enterprise architecture depends on some basic categories and distinctions, which help to define the dimensions for various schemas and frameworks.
Top-down / Bottom-up
Ideal / Real
Abstract / Concrete
Espoused / In…
What does "Top-Down" mean?
#entarch There seem to be several different ways people use the term “top-down”.
Management hierarchy. Top-down means traditional command-and-control. See my post on Multiple Styles of EA.
Decomposition/Refinement. Top-down means starting from bro…
A week in Tweets: 21-27 August 2011
Another not-quite-so-delayed collection of Tweets and links – Share and Enjoy? Usual and usual, of course: over to you… Enterprise-architecture, strategy and all the ‘business big-picture’ stuff: SAlhir: RT @Annemcx RT @sajidahinakhan RSA Animate – The Empathic Civilisation http://youtu.be/l7AWnfFRc7g via @youtube #entarch FlorianQuarre: US energy usage: Well rendered dataViz, plus striking fact for me: 58% […]
Creating an IT Strategy – Management by Maxim
I have heard that 90% of all businesses do not have a written Business Strategy. Its in their heads – but as an Enterprise Architect how do you extract it so that you can create a viable IT Strategy? Often times CxOs don’t have time to have a s…
Creating an IT Strategy – Management by Maxim
I have heard that 90% of all businesses do not have a written Business Strategy. Its in their heads – but as an Enterprise Architect how do you extract it so that you can create a viable IT Strategy? Often times CxOs don’t have time to have a strategic dialogue. One way to solve this problem is to employ the “Maxim Process”
The Maxim Process is described by Broadbent and Kitzis in [Broadbent+05] as a pragmatic way to extract enough information for a good enough IT strategy while not investing more than a day’s workshop with senior management. The CIO will organize a work-‐ shop with CxOs, which will lead to documenting 2 kinds of so-‐called Maxims:
- Business Maxims
- And as a result IT Maxims
Maxims are a few concise principles that are used to document the strategic direction of an enterprise. A Maxim workshop will usually not produce more than around 5 business maxims. For each of those, management will derive 4-‐5 maxims for the IT function that will help to support them.
A typical Maxim Workshop will be split up into two parts:
- Part 1: Finding the Business Maxims,
- Part 2: Deriving the IT Maxims
An external facilitator should moderate the workshop day and process.
To give examples imagine an old economy financial service provider like a big insurance company that runs more than one brand name on the market. For such an enterprise you could find the following business maxim:
- Create synergies in back office and service functions wherever brand identity is not compromised
IT maxims that could be deducted from such a business strategy could be:
- Define standard architectures and platforms used by all of the group’s companies in order to leverage synergies and to reduce IT cost
- Harmonize the IT application systems for the group’s companies wherever there is a business case for this.
SOURCE: TOGAF9 QuickStart Guide 2009
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Posted via email from Jeffrey Blake – The Enterprise Architect | Comment »
Creating an IT Strategy – Management by Maxim
I have heard that 90% of all businesses do not have a written Business Strategy. Its in their heads – but as an Enterprise Architect how do you extract it so that you can create a viable IT Strategy? Often times CxOs don’t have time to have a strategic dialogue. One way to solve this problem is to employ the “Maxim Process”
The Maxim Process is described by Broadbent and Kitzis as a pragmatic way to extract enough information for a good enough IT strategy while not investing more than a day’s workshop with senior management. The CIO will organize a workshop with CxOs, which will lead to documenting 2 kinds of so-‐called Maxims:
- Business Maxims
- And as a result IT Maxims
Maxims are a few concise principles that are used to document the strategic direction of an enterprise. A Maxim workshop will usually not produce more than around 5 business maxims. For each of those, management will derive 4-‐5 maxims for the IT function that will help to support them.
A typical Maxim Workshop will be split up into two parts:
- Part 1: Finding the Business Maxims,
- Part 2: Deriving the IT Maxims
An external facilitator should moderate the workshop day and process.
To give examples imagine an old economy financial service provider like a big insurance company that runs more than one brand name on the market. For such an enterprise you could find the following business maxim:
- Create synergies in back office and service functions wherever brand identity is not compromised
IT maxims that could be deducted from such a business strategy could be:
- Define standard architectures and platforms used by all of the group’s companies in order to leverage synergies and to reduce IT cost
- Harmonize the IT application systems for the group’s companies wherever there is a business case for this.
SOURCE: TOGAF9 QuickStart Guide 2009
What’s the point of this ‘EA metamodel’?
I’ve been writing a lot recently about metamodels for enterprise-architecture and the like: but what’s the point? Why bother? Why all this fuss about something that’s way too technical to be of interest to almost anyone in the real workaday world? The real point behind all of this discussion (and there’ve been some really valuable comments […]
Idea Collecting: Game Theory
Readers here at Elemental Links know that I’m an idea collector. I’m constantly on the look out for interesting articles in business, news and trade journals that either relate to my current work, or more likely, provide fodder for future work.
Lately, I’ve been highlighting these discoveries over on Active Information. This week, I discuss an intriguing piece in the Economist’s Technology Quarterly on Game Theory in Practice. Check out the Active Information post.
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