A Presentation on ICT for Lawyers

This post is a summary of a presentation I gave to a group of lawyers on ICT fundamentals. It represents my own opinion, and not that of my employers or anyone else! I apologies for it being so wordy – but a lot of material was covered. My presentation walked through some fundamental concepts in […]

A Presentation on ICT for Lawyers

This post is a summary of a presentation I gave to a group of lawyers on ICT fundamentals. It represents my own opinion, and not that of my employers or anyone else! I apologies for it being so wordy – but a lot of material was covered. My presentation walked through some fundamental concepts in […]

IT4IT™ Reference Architecture Version 2.0, an Open Group Standard

By The Open Group 1 Title/Current Version IT4IT™ Reference Architecture Version 2.0, an Open Group Standard 2 The Basics The Open Group IT4IT Reference Architecture standard comprises a reference architecture and a value chain-based operating model for managing the business … Continue reading

Enterprise Architecture at the Crossroads

Enterprise Architecture is facing several challenges as a discipline and a practice. In this blog post, John Gøtze outlines four central challenges, and discusses what should be done. He suggests that enterprise architecture management must focus on enterprise collaboration. The Challenges The discipline Enterprise Architecture (EA) is at a crossroads, facing four challenges: The first […]

Agile Development And Data Management Do Coexist

A frequent question I get from data management and governance teams is how to stay ahead of or on top of the Agile development process that app dev pros swear by. New capabilities are spinning out faster and faster, with little adherence to ensuring compliance with data standards and policies.

Well, if you can’t beat them, join them . . . and that’s what your data management pros are doing, jumping into Agile development for data.

Forrester’s survey of 118 organizations shows that just a little over half of organizations have implemented Agile development in some manner, shape, or form to deliver on data capabilities. While they lag about one to two years behind app dev’s adoption, the results are already beginning to show in terms of getting a better handle on their design and architectural decisions, improved data management collaboration, and better alignment of developer skills to tasks at hand.

But we have a long way to go. The first reason to adopt Agile development is to speed up the release of data capabilities. And the problem is, Agile development is adopted to speed up the release of data capabilities. In the interest of speed, the key value of Agile development is quality. So, while data management is getting it done, they may be sacrificing the value new capabilities are bringing to the business.

Let’s take an example. Where Agile makes sense to start is where teams can quickly spin up data models and integration points in support of analytics. Unfortunately, this capability delivery may be restricted to a small group of analysts that need access to data. Score “1” for moving a request off the list, score “0” for scaling insights widely to where action will be taking quickly.

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Agile Development And Data Management Do Coexist

A frequent question I get from data management and governance teams is how to stay ahead of or on top of the Agile development process that app dev pros swear by. New capabilities are spinning out faster and faster, with little adherence to ensuring compliance with data standards and policies.

Well, if you can’t beat them, join them . . . and that’s what your data management pros are doing, jumping into Agile development for data.

Forrester’s survey of 118 organizations shows that just a little over half of organizations have implemented Agile development in some manner, shape, or form to deliver on data capabilities. While they lag about one to two years behind app dev’s adoption, the results are already beginning to show in terms of getting a better handle on their design and architectural decisions, improved data management collaboration, and better alignment of developer skills to tasks at hand.

But we have a long way to go. The first reason to adopt Agile development is to speed up the release of data capabilities. And the problem is, Agile development is adopted to speed up the release of data capabilities. In the interest of speed, the key value of Agile development is quality. So, while data management is getting it done, they may be sacrificing the value new capabilities are bringing to the business.

Let’s take an example. Where Agile makes sense to start is where teams can quickly spin up data models and integration points in support of analytics. Unfortunately, this capability delivery may be restricted to a small group of analysts that need access to data. Score “1” for moving a request off the list, score “0” for scaling insights widely to where action will be taking quickly.

Read more

Full Stack Enterprises (Who Needs Architects?)

In my last post, “Locking Down the Prisoners: Control, Conflict and Compliance for Organizations”, I returned to a topic that I’ve been touching on periodically over the last year, organizations as systems, which overlaps significantly with the topic of enterprise architecture (not to be confused with enterprise IT architecture of which EA is a superset). […]

Risk

As architect we all constantly have to evaluate risk, but our risk assessment is mainly based on the awareness and worries on risk. So when we are worried we use extra safe seatbelt, preach on using condoms, install manual theft protection and highlight ant security concern to everyone. On the other hand when relaxing and … Continue reading Risk

Key transformational steps of architecture away from ICT

Have you wondered why CIOs do not become CEOs? What prevents them from achieving at the highest organisational levels? It’s because they don’t have their hands on revenue, unlike CMOs, CFOs, brand marketers, and sales directors. So all that remain in the realm of ICT are seen as purely administrative and like all administrative functions … Continue reading Key transformational steps of architecture away from ICT