Rethinking the Enterprise “Mess” Using a System Thinking Approach

I have long considered the discipline of “architecture” as a problem solving technique that brings together art, philosophy, engineering, physics, culture, technology, etc.  Producing a high quality architecture is to provide a platform for the enterprise to balance form, function, and elegance.   Or using today’s parlance: structure, behaviors, and desire.   I know the term “desire”…

Data-architecture 101 and the naming-problem

The echoes of the ‘naming-problem‘ around business-architecture and the like continue to rumble on, this time via another happy Twitter-exchange with Ron Tolido: rtolido: @tetradian just show me the non-IT people that invented #entarch and / or #bizarch tetradian: @rtolido we’re in a circular-definition here: what you call #entarch or #bizarch is whatever was ‘invented’ […]

The Architecture Crystal Ball: Predictions for 2012

I have had the opportunity to read several documents containing estimations on what the chief architects and CIOs should expect of the concept of Enterprise Architecture in 2012. As a result I have made some thoughts of my own, and my thoughts have been delimited to what could happen in Scandinavia. There are reasons for […]

Enterprise Architecture Certifications Distilled

Year after year I am finding that Enterprise Architecture certifications are becoming more important to architects. Back in 2007, I remember reading an article from Gene Leganza called, “Is EA Certification Important?”. In that article he stated that 65% of…

Using SCAN: some quick examples

Yeah, right. ‘SCAN’. Yet another pretty acronym. What’s the point? What’s the use? Gimme some real examples, huh? This one’s a follow-up to the previous post “Let’s do a quick SCAN on this”, in which I introduced the SCAN frame for sensemaking at business-speed: (The above is the updated core-graphic – see ‘SCAN – an […]

Comparing SCAN and Cynefin

Sensemaking in business? What is this [choose-your-expletive] ‘SCAN‘? Why complicate things with yet another sensemaking-framework? Isn’t SCAN just a rebadged rip-off of Cynefin? And why not just use Cynefin like everyone else does, anyway? I’ll be providing some detailed worked-examples of SCAN in the next few posts or so, but I’d better get these questions […]

Where do we start with EA? – a practical question

You’re an experienced enterprise-architect, having spent most your working life in one industry. You now have a new job, in a new company, in an industry that’s entirely new to you. And the company at present has no architecture at all: you’re ‘it’. Where on earth do you start? That’s the situation my friend Alan […]