Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
This blog post deals with first day at the summer camp for Enterprise Architecture in Week 22 that was held in Denmark at the IT University of Copenhagen. The participants were mostly students. The tagline for this event is “Scandinavian … Continue reading →
In the May 15th issue of CIO magazine, there is a rather interesting article, especially for Enterprise Architecture practitioners. The article, written by Stephanie Overby (a freelance writer), is titled “RIP I.T. Value” and opens with the f…
Don’t you believe it! For many larger organizations SOA is only now becoming central to key business strategies. Whilst SOA has been around for almost a decade, few companies have achieved real maturity. Governance issues in particular have allowed f…
Don’t you believe it! For many larger organizations SOA is only now becoming central to key business strategies. Whilst SOA has been around for almost a decade, few companies have achieved real maturity. Governance issues in particular have allowed f…
Today I was reading an op-ed piece in MIS titled “Maintain or Modernise“. This is a one-pager that summarises some received wisdom on the need for organisations to effectively manage the pressure to adopt new technologies and mitigate the risks they entail. Here is the passage that sets up the thesis of the article…. Businesses […]
I was impressed with Cathay Pacific Airways have created a set of metrics for measuring Enterprise Debt and was struck by the fact they’d omitted the word ‘technical’ from the description. I think the debt metaphor is very powerful for explaining why businesses should pay attention to architecture but I do feel we should not only consider the technical debt, we should also understand the ‘debt’ created by ill-considered processes and hard-to-grasp strategies (all part of EA IMO). Some questions I’m pondering:
What would a 360 degree set of metrics for Enterprise Debt look like? Would VPEC-T analysis help? How can we create a board level visualisation of ED and make a a key tool for a ‘Managing Complexity’ agenda and guide decision-making when designing business change?
All thoughts for my long flight home at the end of the week.
Here’s a link to a piece from my friend Charles Edwards on Enterprise Technical Debt that added to my thoughts:
http://www.agileea.com/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110:what-is-enterprise-technical-debt&catid=51:enterprise-architecture-&Itemid=54
Nigel Green
5Di Ltd.
Mobile: +44 (0)7818 53 22 43
Web: www.5dinnovation.com
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If you have a small business and you have just created a website then you want to started advertising your site. The best way to get recognition is to have your URL listed on other websites. The easy way to start is to create a business listing in…
If you have a small business and you have just created a website then you want to started advertising your site. The best way to get recognition is to have your URL listed on other websites. The easy way to start is to create a business listing in as many directories as possible. Here is a list of 10 to get you started.
Posted via email from Jeffrey Blake – The Brand Hammer | Comment »
If you have a small business and you have just created a website then you want to started advertising your site. The best way to get recognition is to have your URL listed on other websites. The easy way to start is to create a b…
And it’s catch-up time again… not too delayed this time, though. A rather larger collection of Tweets and links this week – not sure why. Usual categories, usual comments or tags in italics, usual ‘Read more…’ link. As usual.
Enterprise-architecture, business-architecture, business-strategy, innovation and the usual stuff that goes around business big-picture:
bartleeten: Agile Architecture […]
This visual map shows how business units of The Walt Disney Company contribute to each other’s activities. Stunning, he drew this in 1957.
I blogged a while ago: “Architects are comfortable with the idea of creating visual …
I am going to talk about a consequence of the hype cycle that seems to be missed by many. I will use an anecdote to illustrate the point…
About 10 years ago, I was engaged on a short assignment to review a new technology organization’s customer service programs. The company had grown rapidly in a new market that was now maturing. They had 3 customer service systems. They had 4 main customer groups served through 4 sales channels. Each channel used different business processes to execute the same activities and accessed all three systems. The IT solutions had grown organically with the business and were a mess! But now, with the market maturing, there were mainstream solutions from major suppliers that could replace these systems that were starting to constrain the business. However, the cost of resolving this, $15M, was seen as too expensive.
A few years later, the organization had lost its competitive position, had moved from number 1 to number 2 and was taken over by a foreign competitor entering the market. With a more complex product portfolio, more customer groups, a more complex sales model, the customer services systems were now seen as a major constraint to business growth. I happened to be engaged through another consultancy to look at the problem again. This time the cost of sorting it out had grown to $80M. Again the executive board decided that this was too expensive.
Recently, the organization merged with a major competitor. I heard that they had embarked yet again on a program to replace their legacy customer service systems. The market is now much more complex with many more products, it is also more competitive with tighter margins. The systems have grown in complexity since the last attempt to sort them out. I suspect the cost this time will be $150M or more. A ten times increase in cost in ten years. More importantly, the organization was the market leader 10 years ago but now it is in 3rd position with a likely drop to 4th.
The key point is that everything that you build before good practice emerges is likely to be poorly designed and poorly built. It should be thrown away and you should start over. If you don’t you will inevitably perpetuate bad practice. Future development will be compromised because time pressures to deliver tactical business change and the constraint of the legacy. And the cost of replacing it to deliver strategic business change will grow over time.
Sometimes I wonder why there is so much legacy. The answer is obvious if you overlay the adoption cycle with hype cycle…
So what are the lessons:
