Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Recently launched at the Open Group meeting in London last week a venture between The Open Group and the TM Forum produced a 110 page report on how their two frameworks (TOGAF and Frameworx) align and where they extend each…
SearchSOA.com interviewed co-authors Thomas Erl and Anne Thomas Manes to discuss their recently published book, SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud (Prentice Hall, April 2011). The Q&A didn’t encourage me to buy …
A good friend of mine was in town this week to visit one of his clients. When we got together for dinner (and, yes, drinks) one of the topics (inevitably) was architecture. Lately he has been working with some very large international comp…
An Approach to Sense Making and Intelligent Business There are probably many different ways to gain sense in each of the many different enterprises and organizations across the planet. This particular paper investigates one particular approach question the validity of … Continue reading →
A good friend of mine was in town this week to visit one of his clients. When we got together for dinner (and, yes, drinks) one of the topics (inevitably) was architecture. Lately he has been working with some very large international companies re-architecting their public web sites to flexibly deliver localized content. The solution was to combine Service-Oriented Architecture with Web Content Management.
In a nutshell, the architecture includes a web front end that is composed from portlets where each portlet requests content from WCM system(s) using WSRP. The front end is de-coupled from the WCM systems via a service bus where the service bus is responsible for routing the content request to the appropriate WCM system. (I’m using the term “service bus” here in the most generic sense, not to denote a specific product. My friend prefers the term “service fabric”.)
This has an obvious advantage for localized content. The service bus routes the request to the correct WCM system based on the chosen local. This allows each division, country, or geography to manage its own content yet the corporate web presence is still unified.
Another advantage my friend pointed out is that this architecture simplifies previewing of new or modified content. The service bus can route content requests to a staging WCM system for users that are responsible for reviewing new or modified content. The new/modified content can be viewed directly in the production web site before being “published”.
It figures that I’d have this conversation *after* writing the ORA User Interaction document (a part of ITSO). Nonetheless the ORA User Interaction document does cover these topics albeit not this specific usage. This architecture is a specific example of what is denoted generically as “federation” (e.g. section 4.2.3) in the document.
As technology architecture professionals, we can only be successful and valuable to those who pay us if we frame our work in terms of capabilities at the outset. If we start with details, we’ll ultimately fail.
Facebook making its data centers specifications open source demonstrates that IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) utility computing is now seen as a commodity and non-differentiating to companies like Facebook and anyone else who wants cheap compute res…
The basic question I’m exploring visually here is “Is there another perspective to be found using the BMCanvas by Alexander Osterwalder at any orientation?” For the Architect (whatever prefix is used Business/Enterprise/IT) relating to the concept of different orientations may help in focusing the effort on the areas most important to the sponsor. The value […]
Almost up to date: the previous week’s worth of links and Tweets – sorted into the usual categories, of course.
Enterprise-architecture, business-architecture, business-strategy, business-innovations and other themes at the larger business scope:
practicingEA: Unintended consequences of hyper-connected. Next #entarch challenge: predict these b4 disaster http://tinyurl.com/6zaegec >yes, exactly… strong recommend #itarch #entarch #bizarch #emergence
EABard: 11 Soft Skills For […]
I must admit I’m pleased with this brief interview, filmed by the AV crew at AE Rio 2011 (many thanks, guys!). It covers a lot of ground in barely four minutes: the importance of stories and culture in enterprise-architecture, key differences in the Latin America market compared to elsewhere, and much else besides.
(There’s supposed to […]
I hate watching sports. Period. Except curling where I am confused yet fascinated all at the same time. Despite my aversion, I can still see lessons for EAs and those executing strategy. So here goes…
Consider soccer and (American) football. In soccer, patterns and plays are improvised and executed very quickly. Goals are scored when you put the ball in the other team’s goal. You run until you score, get hurt, or just pass out. That’s about it. In football, plays are thought out, deliberated by an overstaffed sideline, and then executed. Incremental progress is measured in yards and downs. At some point, someone either kicks a field goal (3 pts) or moves the ball into the end zone (6 pts). The game moves slower and more deliberately than soccer. This is where I see the lesson.
Regardless of EA methodology or framework, one needs to construct some sort of roadmap for their architecture. Otherwise, all those massive architecture diagrams are nothing more than 21st century art. The roadmap articulates the various steps an organization needs to execute in order to reach a target state in the architecture. There may be multiple target states before arriving to the next "future state". And within each target state there are incremental steps. Sometimes, its baby steps, and that is OK.
To paraphrase a previous tweet or blog post, EA (strategy execution) is a set of executed tactics orchestrated to achieve a desired end state. EA programs should take great care to crisply define the target states and the incremental tactics used to achieve each target state. And, when those tactics or states are realized, examine closely if one is still on track and is moving forward. I always advocate the value of "advancing 1 yard" on a project or other initiative regarding the architecture.
Sometimes, a yard is all you can get. Take it, and keep moving.