The no-plan Plan: the ‘why’ of architecture

A bit more detail on what I see coming up in my ‘no-plan Plan‘, starting with the theme about ‘the ‘why’ of architecture’. One thing I’ve always found worrying in most current ‘enterprise’-architecture is that there’s been almost no attention given to the ‘why’. It’s seemed that ‘why’ was just a given: ‘orders from above’, […]

More on the ‘no-plan Plan’

Okay. Seems there are indeed times when I have to accept that, yes, it is 3am, and I have indeed been woken up by an idea that isn’t going to let me sleep until I’ve written it down. Oh well. So best just get on with it, I guess. In a comment to my earlier […]

More on ‘the toad in the road’

How can we ensure that the ideas and models that we use are appropriate to the context? What methods can we use to evaluate new ideas? Perhaps more to the point, how do we protect ourselves from ideas that won’t fit in our architecture-ecosystem? This extends the previous post on ‘Coping with the toad-in-the-road‘, where […]

Coping with ‘the toad in the road’

Every discipline is blighted by their own versions of an all-too-common problem: “For every difficult, complex, challenging question, there’s at least one clear, simple, easy-to-understand wrong answer”. In Australian parlance, that type of magnificently-misleading ‘wrong answer’ is known as ‘the toad in the road’. Every ‘trade’ has its toads, in some form or another. In […]

A week in Tweets: 02-08 October 2011

Another week’s worth of Tweets and links, for once almost on time. Usual categories, of course, with a few extra bits and pieces as usual. Over to you? Enterprise-architecture, business architecture and that kind of stuff: practicingEA: At an engagement yesterday client kept using the word ‘enterprise’ 2 mean big company IT…hmmm. Not what #entarch […]

A week in Tweets: 18-24 September 2011

It’s back again, by popular (lack of?) demand: another week’s collection of Tweets and links. All the usual categories, confusions and all-too-necessary break before we start: Enterprise-architecture, business-architecture and the ‘business big-picture’: SAlhir: RT @complexified “Secrets of the Six Principles” – great primer on #complexity in orgs, and case studies. [PDF] http://bit.ly/q6JPcR thoughttrans: Can roadmaps […]

Backbone and business-rules

What would be the ‘backbone’ of an enterprise-architecture? And where would business-rules fit into that picture? This is a perhaps somewhat tangled follow-on from four different threads: my previous ‘backbone’ posts ‘Agility needs a backbone‘ and ‘Architecting the enterprise backbone‘ Peter Bakker‘s exploration ‘The Enterprise Backbone‘ Carole-Ann Matignon‘s post ‘Visual Logic: A picture is worth […]

A week in Tweets: 11-17 September 2011

Another week’s worth of Tweets and links, for once available almost straight away. Usual categories an’ all: make of it what you will? Enterprise-architecture, strategy, innovation and all the ‘business big-picture’ themes: gkathan: RT @simplicableanna: Why Enterprise Architects need to understand games http://bit.ly/pSg4eQ #entarch #cio >sorry, but I still can’t see past the hype to […]

Enterprise Canvas as service-viability checklist

One of the more valuable uses of the Enterprise Canvas is as a checklist to verify completeness and viability of services, in any context within the enterprise. By ‘completeness’ I mean that we check that the service has all the connections and support and flows that it needs to play its full part in the […]

A week in Tweets: 28 August – 03 September 2011

Almost catching up for once: only one week late. Another collection of Tweets and links, anyway, all in the usual format and so on. Enterprise-architecture and the usual ‘big-picture for business’ stuff: gkathan: RT @pbmobi: The 7 Rules of Tubemapping http://wp.me/Piayu-oC #entarch #storytelling gkathan: Perspectives of Enterprising, Architecture & Systems: Enterprising http://bit.ly/petnf1 #entarch >summary of […]