Search Results for: business model

Cut and Paste Enterprise Architecture

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Throughout my professional career, I have been afforded the opportunity to learn a lot about the inner-workings of both P&C and Life insurers. The insurance industry has a consortium (ACORD) that produces a widely adopted business capability map that many insurers leverage as part of their enterprise architecture practice. There is goodness in insurers collaborating via consortium […]

The post Cut and Paste Enterprise Architecture appeared first on James McGovern.

Cut and Paste Enterprise Architecture

by

Throughout my professional career, I have been afforded the opportunity to learn a lot about the inner-workings of both P&C and Life insurers. The insurance industry has a consortium (ACORD) that produces a widely adopted business capability map that many insurers leverage as part of their enterprise architecture practice. There is goodness in insurers collaborating via consortium […]

The post Cut and Paste Enterprise Architecture appeared first on James McGovern.

Revisiting Defense in Depth…

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Today, I want to question the sage wisdom of Security Architecture Professionals. The notion of defense-in-depth may need to be revisited. More security doesn’t necessarily mean better security. In fact, the current strategy of most organizations—layering on many different technologies—is not only proving ineffective, it is overly complex and expensive. This notion needs better enterprise […]

The post Revisiting Defense in Depth… appeared first on James McGovern.

Revisiting Defense in Depth…

by

Today, I want to question the sage wisdom of Security Architecture Professionals. The notion of defense-in-depth may need to be revisited. More security doesn’t necessarily mean better security. In fact, the current strategy of most organizations—layering on many different technologies—is not only proving ineffective, it is overly complex and expensive. This notion needs better enterprise […]

The post Revisiting Defense in Depth… appeared first on James McGovern.

Smart Apps for the Enterprise – Mendix World 2016 keynote

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Last years Mendix World was centered around Smart Apps. It was the best conference of the year. At least in my opinion, I might be biased… The conference had a great speaker line-up, including keynotes from Geoffrey Moore, Simon Wardley, and Adrian Cockcroft. All slides and videos can be found here. I had the honor to announce Mendix 7, our latest major release. I explored the topic of Smart Apps.

The post Smart Apps for the Enterprise – Mendix World 2016 keynote appeared first on The Enterprise Architect.

Should ‘GOODNESS” replace the word “GOVERNANCE”?

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I believe we need rethink the Enterprise Architecture practice. I favour starting from a ‘Systems Thinking’ foundation, and therefore go back to John Boyd’s OODA loop:



and Dan Ward’s Simplicity Cycle.

Please take a look at this video to give the rest of this post a bit of context:

Should  ‘GOODNESS” replace the word “GOVERNANCE” in the new order of things?


As a starting point. I believe by standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants of those who originated and develop System Thinking, Cybernetics, Complexity Theory and Design Thinking will help us re-invent EA.  Personally, no longer call myself an Enterprise Architect – I prefer the title Change Designer – why? Because it simply describes what I do and I can explain it to C-Levels in just a few words entirely focused on business outcomes, stages in the journey and risks & IRACIS (IR: improved revenue, AC: avoid cost & IS: improve service).

 Update 0603/17

 Can we look to the Unicorns for inspiration? I recall a discussion I had with a few Silicon Valley types at OSCON London recently. I asked a very genuine question:

“How do the likes of Netflix, Paypal, Uber etc. approach Governance?”

 The answer: “We don’t use that word, in Silicon Valley!”

This got me thinking; surely things must be driven towards some sort of order? And then, maybe my mental model was wrong. Maybe if I put on my “Complex Adaptive” hat (ref. Cynefin), I will see that the architecture must evolve, in chunks of context specific outcomes, over time. And in this approach, is “Goodness” ( a la Dan Ward above) the key measure of alignment with the outcome?; in a Complex system, the bad are attenuated, and the good amplified – this is how, useful (fit-for-purpose), solutions evolve. So, maybe, it’s not about driving things to a predetermined outcome; maybe instead, it’s about orchestrating and encouraging adoption of practice that delivers context-specific “goodness” (in Dan Ward’s sense of the word).

It strikes me that there appears to be a close relationship between Dand Ward’s Complexity/Goodness model (describe in the video above) to this one:


 Although ‘User Happiness” is only one context: a Value System. Another might be ‘The Regulator’. Is it true, however, that focusing on simplicity, and context-specific “Goodness”, are we more likely to satisfy both?



Hence my question – Should “GOODNESS” replace “GOVERNANCE”? Or, indeed, is this what they already do in Silicon Valley? I’m sure there’s much more to understand – but I think it’s a good question for debate!

Please follow the tags #foundindesign #horsesunicorns on Twitter for more discussion on this and related topics.

Emergence: Babies and Bathwater, Plans and Planning

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  “Emergent” is a word that I run into from time to time. When I do run into it, I’m reminded of an exchange from the movie Gallipoli: Archy Hamilton: I’ll see you when I see you. Frank Dunne: Yeah. Not if I see you first. The reason for my ambivalent relationship with the word […]

WTF is a Dyslexic Polymath?

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One Saturday last January, my wife and I were visiting my cousin Andy and his family for the weekend. He and I were in his kitchen; me bending his ear about my new ‘Found In Design’ un-book idea, while he cooked breakfast.

Andy’s a smart cookie who works for Ricardo UK and someone I love to test ideas with. After ten minutes of me machine-gunning my thoughts at Andy, he rested the spatula in the frying pan and turned to face me.

“Look, Nige, you’re a great storyteller, and I like your ideas, you know I do use one of your thinking tools, but isn’t this stuff just common sense”?

I paused for a moment mid-stream, at first not sure whether to be insulted or pleased. I decided pleased – and with a smile retorted with a quote from Voltaire:

“Why is common sense, not so common”?

Andy glanced back down at the pan, and sighed.  He had a moment of reflection; his inner voice telling him that lives with that reality daily. I’d stated the obvious again! 

 He glanced over, and with a withered smile, replied:

“Good, point…” and added,  “Would you like a sausage with your breakfast?”

***

A few days later I was recounting the conversation with Andy to a friend. Once I’d finished, she paused for a moment, and then laughed loudly – looking me square in the eye:

“I know exactly what he means.  It often seems to me that you end up stating the ‘bleeding obvious’, but when I think about it, it wasn’t actually obvious before you started babbling on”.

She then added:

“I think it’s the way your weird ‘dyslexic polymath’ brain works – you seem to see simple patterns that the rest of us don’t see. And when tell us a story that explains one of them, they just do seem like common sense”!

“Oh, thanks”, I said flatly,  feeling a bit insulted, and confused.

I guess I’ve always been embarrassed about my dyslexia. This stems from unhelpful, “old-school”, teachers and, frankly, a fairly unsupportive father (who freely admits now he made a bit of a hash of parenting me). Mum, however, was different she helped me understand Shakespeare’s plays through Lambs Tales and encouraged me to write poetry, lyrics & music. She helped me tell my stories.

So when my friend called out my dyslexia, I felt very awkward at first. But then I realised, she had a point; the way my brain is wired does help me see things a bit differently. And I suppose my fanaticism over SIMPLICITY and PATTERN seeking might be directly related to dyslexia. I think they might be the coping mechanism I’ve used to survive, and thrive, despite my lack of academic qualification. So maybe being a ‘Thicko” isn’t so bad after all; maybe weirdly-wired misfits can help by stating the “bleeding obvious”!

***


Oh, and, by the way, once I’d looked up ‘polymath’ I decided I would buy my friend a pint next time I saw her.