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Back To School

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By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

describe the imageWith summer only halfway behind us and many professionals scrambling to fit in vacation time, you might think this is an odd time to contemplate going back to school.  I beg to differ.  It is always time to think about continuing professional education. Being successful in your trade means staying well informed of the most recent developments and changes that unfold within your field. Continuing professional education is important because it provides validation of an individual’s knowledge and skills.

Professionals–such as those working in the medical, legal and financial fields–are required to be consistently up to date on new standards, in addition to being refreshed on the knowledge they may have obtained previously. Continuing education ensures to patients, clients and licensing agencies that professionals are qualified to handle the responsibilities that affect people’s lives. Even if someone’s life is not at stake, any customer paying for your product or services wants to be assured that they are hiring knowledgeable experts, so similar expectations should apply to any corporate setting as well. 

In many organizations leadership teams rely on their enterprise architects to help chart a successful course for the business.  According to Wikipedia “Enterprise architects work with stakeholders, both leadership and subject matter experts, to build a holistic view of the organization’s strategy, processes, information, and information technology assets. The role of the enterprise architect is to take this knowledge and ensure that the business and IT are in alignment. The enterprise architect links the business mission, strategy, and processes of an organization to its IT strategy, and documents this using multiple architectural models or views that show how the current and future needs of an organization will be met in an efficient, sustainable, agile, and adaptable manner.” Quite a mouthful!

With the breadth of the enterprise architects role and the rapid advancement and development of new technologies, continuing professional education is critical for the Enterprise Architecture (EA) professional.  Unfortunately, today most of the non-degree professional education in EA takes the form of EA related certifications.  While certifications are fine, they typically focus only on one framework or perspective and are mostly training oriented. 

There are few continuing education opportunities for mid and senior level people that focus on broader strategic issues.  Creating leaders that think and act strategically is crucial for a position with the responsibility of aligning business goals, strategies, people and technology.  With so much at stake, it’s good to see that some programs are being developed to offer EA professionals an opportunity to hone their strategic analysis skills.

The Center for Enterprise Architecture at Penn State University is taking a leadership role in defining and offering these programs for mid and senior level EA leaders.  That’s one of the reasons Troux is excited to support their program (Troux Donates $4 Million in Software to Penn State University).  Two goals for the Penn State Center for Enterprise Architecture are to help EA become more of a mainstream academic discipline and assist in the evolution of EA into a “real profession” – on par with established professions such as accounting and engineering. 

As the EA profession continues to evolve, the importance of continuing education will only become more significant.   Perhaps the time is now to get this part of your professional development started.   Perhaps this is the time to go back to school.  Don’t be late.  The school bell is about to ring.

For more information about the Penn State Center for Enterprise Architecture and their executive programs please see:

http://www.pennstateexeced.com/ET070213-1.html

 



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IT Chargeback and Cost Transparency

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In part 11 of “Memoirs of an Enterprise Architect” I discussed the importance of having a robust Governance process in order to be successful with Enterprise Architecture.  This week I will talk about the IT Chargeback Model.
What is IT Chargeback…

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Top Strategy and Planning Lessons Learned

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I’ve spent a few years designing and facilitating strategy and planning processes (aka business performance management or BPM) and have gained some insight that I thought might be interesting to folks. This article is a work-in-progress set of be…

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Top Strategy and Planning Lessons Learned

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I’ve spent a few years designing and facilitating strategy and planning processes (aka business performance management or BPM) and have gained some insight that I thought might be interesting to folks. This article is a work-in-progress set of best practices I feel are worth sharing. Top Business Performance Management Lessons Learned 1. Be clear on…

How to build a Roadmap – Sequence

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This post explores the step where we discover the optimum sequence of actions recognizing predecessor – successor relationships. This is undertaken now that we have the initiatives and the prioritization is done. What things do we have to get accomplished first, before others? Are there dependencies we have identified that need to be satisfied before moving forward? What about the capacity for the organization to absorb change?

Think Different!

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 “If you do what you have always done, you’ll get what you have always gotten.” This quote is variously attributed to the self-improvement guru, Tony Robbins, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, and perhaps others. The fact that it is so often quoted points not to its truth but to its implication – we struggle […]

Data Management 6: Meta Data Management

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This is the sixth blog post in the Data Management series. In the previous post we zoomed in on Master Data Management (MDM). This time the focus shifts to Meta Data Management, or the art of keeping track of data about data.TheoryMeta data is often l…

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The Chief Marketing Technology Officer – CMTO – and the EA

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The Chief Marketing Technology Officer (CMTO) is recently an
often-proposed role, that combines the interactive marketing savvy and
experience of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the traditional
information technology operations, management and investment knowledge
of a CIO or CTO. More and more often, digital marketing requirements of
an organization need a healthy integration of both marketing and IT
skills. A good deal of the CMTO/CMO’s “enterprise” scope to address is actually
outside of their organization, i.e. dealing with Internet-based
services, tools or 3rd-party sourced data and information.  This expanded, external scope can effectively, and should be addressed by the Enterprise Architect.

The Chief Marketing Technology Officer – CMTO – and the EA

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Admittedly, it’s a bit of a leap – addressing the converging roles of the CIO and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) with an Enterprise Architecture perspective, particularly when a CMO’s “Enterprise” ranges far and wide of the actual organization they serve. The Internet does extend now into outer space a bit, after all.

The classic scope of the Enterprise is that which is contained within both an operating and investment budget (OPEX and CAPEX) – the assets and resources that are produced, consumed and used under a common business (or mission) strategy.  Perhaps a company or agency, a department or line-of-business, or some other facility or organization segment. Enterprise Architects (EAs) most often influence these sorts of enterprise contexts.

A CMO certainly runs a business segment, investing in people, assets and consumable resources – most of which can be touched, inventoried or governed in some way to align with the segment’s business strategy (make revenue, deliver goods or services, be a public steward, contain costs, mitigate risk). A CMO’s “Enterprise”, particularly in this digital age, is also that of the online, networked audience. Social media profiles, data feed providers, branded communications channels, publisher networks and web app platforms – these also are part of the CMO’s “Enterprise”, and require some degree of monitoring, governance, investment control, integrated standardization.  Digital marketing campaign assets and advertisements aren’t usually just thrown to the wilds of the Interwebs (unless they are) – they’re carefully planned, tested, optimized, controlled, monitored and analyzed – both their original forms and any derivations.

Note that, for purposes of this blog, the “CMO” is readily compared to the “Government Services PR Lead” or “Constituent Relationship Communications Lead” – or basically any other leadership position in charge of outreach, communications and basically marketing of Public Sector capabilities or services.

“Traditional” EA doesn’t seem to address the Internet of things, stuff and services as something to be modeled, or deemed compliant, or aligned with standard reference frameworks. This isn’t unlike trying to apply one EA’s influence across an SOA interface boundary – while there are certainly very useful, open standards for both to leverage in delivering SOA success, one organization’s EA model compliance and content isn’t necessarily usable or useful to another organization.  

Can or should one’s Enterprise Architecture scope and framework be applied to all those 3rd-party Internet-hosted products and services a CMO relies upon?  Why not – particularly if this “External Interactive Marketing” business domain is scoped according to some kind of “services taxonomy” (that may likely have parallel definition back within the organization).  For example “Data Publishing” services (like Equifax), “Search” services (like Google), “Information Sharing” and “Community Management” services (like Facebook and LinkedIn).  While these Internet capabilities aren’t owned by the organization, how they’re used can certainly be modeled and approached from the same architectural principles, standards and experience as a already found within the organization.

Enter the “Chief Marketing Technology Officer” (CMTO), a role that combines digital marketing practice and Internet services technology knowledge, with the classic IT investment, management and operations knowledge of a CIO (or CTO). The CMTO not only understands what’s necessary to secure and control information within his organization, but also understands what does or can happen to this information on the public Internet – planned or not.  
Below is a proposed standard “Domain Reference Architecture” for the CMTO role, depicting also the intersection (and expansion) of the traditional EA role.

Chief Marketing Technology Officer Domain Reference Architecture

Helping the CMTO apply architectural principles, governance and repeatable methods for the information lifecycle external to the organization – that’s a worthwhile and appropriate role for the Enterprise Architect…and may be all the more relevant as programs and lines-of-business holistically outsource their information management capabilities to 3rd-party providers and cloud services.  Full-scope alignment of the EA practice to the CMO/CMTO’s domain is probably inevitable, as more industry analysts point to the rapid and dominant global enterprise demand of marketing departments on their organization’s IT investment portfolio.

As written on the Oracle Social Spotlight Blog, “CMOs must see the science behind the art. CIOs must see the art behind the science”.  EAs must align the art and science to meet the business case.

10 reasons why you should organize a FedEx day

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As I briefly described in my tale of a 7 year journey in developing software for the enterprise, at Mendix every month we give employees the chance to work on anything they like and deliver it in 24 hours. We call these 24 hour hackathons “FedEx days”: build it and ship it in one day. We normally start on Thursdays at 4pm with a kickoff during which people will team up. Dinner.

The post 10 reasons why you should organize a FedEx day appeared first on The Enterprise Architect.

The 60/60 Rule of Compromise

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When I was a relatively new manager, I would occasionally get into disagreements with my peers. My CIO would call me into his office and tell me I should go fix the relationship. Being the good employee, I saluted and said, “Yes sir.” The third time this happened I pushed back. “Why are you always […]