Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
What’s the difference between technology-adoption, technology-evolution and lifecycle-management? That’s a question that’s come up recently for me, in part as a follow-up to my recent post ‘Technology-adoption, Wardley-maps and Bimodal-IT‘. The key point here is that, to explain the underlying…
It’s always interesting to look at the agenda for EA conferences – it’s a good indicator of what architects are actually doing, and the type of concerns they are actually addressing. Here are some of the things that struck me when looking at the agenda for the forthcoming iCMG Architecture World summit, being held in Bangalore on…
It’s a good summary of what the EA community has debated in discussion groups, blogs… for the last ten years or so.
Since the launch of the IT4IT™ Certification in May 2016, EA Learning has been an advocate of the IT4IT™ Reference Architecture and its potential implications for our community. Our inaugural course was conducted in Melbourne, […]
The post A Reflection On Our First IT4IT™ Course appeared first on Enterprise Architects.
Large business-critical systems can be brought down by power failure. Who knew?
In July 2016, Southwest Airlines suffered a major disruption to service, which lasted several days. It blamed the failure on “lingering disruptions following performance issues across multiple technology systems”, apparently triggered by a power outage.
Click below for the latest update on our system and operation: https://t.co/bqV1qwahmz— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) July 21, 2016
In August 2016 it was Delta’s turn.
New statement from Delta – power outage caused IT failure pic.twitter.com/trkQbpym05— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) August 8, 2016
@ruskin147 A power outage *triggered* this issue, but poor planning and no HA *caused* it. Why can Netflix get this right but airlines cant?— Richard Price (@RichardPrice) August 8, 2016
I am no computer expert but it seems like a whole system crashing (3 separate airlines) points to bad design (single point of failure)? 3/— Dan DePodwin (@WxDepo) August 8, 2016
Then there were major problems at British Airways (Sept 2016) and United (Oct 2016).
@razankhabour We apologize to our customers for the delay and we appreciate their patience as our IT teams work to resolve this issue.— British Airways (@British_Airways) September 6, 2016
We’re aware of an issue with our system and are working to resolve it. We’ll update as we learn more. We apologize for the inconvenience.— United (@united) October 14, 2016
So every @united flight is grounded because they can’t run a decent IT shop. What year is this??— Randy Bias (@randybias) October 14, 2016
The concept of “single point of failure” is widely known and understood. And the airline industry is rightly obsessed by safety. They wouldn’t fly a plane without backup power for all systems. So what idiot runs a whole company without backup power?
We might speculate what degree of complacency or technical debt can account for this pattern of adverse incidents. I haven’t worked with any of these organizations myself. However, my guess is that some people within the organization were aware of the vulnerability, but this awareness didn’t somehow didn’t penetrate the management hierarchy. (In terms of orgintelligence, a short-sighted board of directors becomes the single point of failure!) I’m also guessing it’s not quite as simple and straightforward as the press reports and public statements imply, but that’s no excuse. Management is paid (among other things) to manage complexity. (Hopefully with the help of system architects.)
If you are the boss of one of the many airlines not mentioned in this post, you might want to schedule a conversation with a system architect. Just a suggestion.
American Airlines Gradually Restores Service After Yesterday’s Power Outage (PR Newswire, 15 August 2003)
British Airways computer outage causes flight delays (Guardian, 6 Sept 2016)
Delta: ‘Large-scale cancellations’ after crippling power outage (CNN Wire, 8 August 2016)
Gatwick Airport Christmas Eve chaos a ‘wake-up call’ (BBC News, 11 April 2014)
Simon Calder, Dozens of flights worldwide delayed by computer systems meltdown (Independent, 14 October 2016)
Jon Cox, Ask the Captain: Do vital functions on planes have backup power? (USA Today, 6 May 2013)
Jad Mouawad, American Airlines Resumes Flights After a Computer Problem (New York Times, 16 April 2013)
Marni Pyke, Southwest Airlines apologizes for delays as it rebounds from outage (Daily Herald, 20 July 2016)
Alexandra Zaslow, Outdated Technology Likely Culprit in Southwest Airlines Outage (NBC News, Oct 12 2015)
Updated 14 October 2016.
The reason that I want to talk about disruption is that when people hear others talk about disruption it creates a lot anxiety that often enough leads to mental illnesses or at least heightens the blood pressure, which is bad enough. Additionally the talk of disruption often creates an unrealistic view of what really is … Continue reading The disruption smoke screen →
I recently went into a High Street branch of my bank and moved a bit of money between accounts. I could have done more, but I didn’t have any additional forms of identification with me.At the end, the cashier asked me for my nationality. British, as it…
My latest white paper for @GlueReply has been posted on the Reply website.
It outlines four dimensions of TotalData™ – reach, richness, assurance and agility – and presents a Value Chain from Raw Data to the Data-Fueled Business.
TotalData™: Start making better use of Data (html) (pdf)
(Now I need to write some more detailed stuff, based on a few client projects.)
TotalData™ is a trademark of Reply Ltd. All rights reserved
Reduce the architecture debt, do Design Thinking in the EA context…
You cannot change the business and technology architecture without adapting the people organisation as well.
Non-Hypothesis driven Unsupervised Machine Learning Platform delivering Medical Automated Reasoning Programming Language Environment (MARPLE) Evidence Based Medicine Decision Process is based on PICO From above link “Using medical evidence to effectively guide medical practice is an important skill for all physicians to learn. The purpose of this article is to understand how to ask and evaluate […]
According to Wikipedia, a party leader is the most powerful official within a political party. I think this statement is debatable. Party leaders in recent history have had varying degrees of power and influence over their own party members, let alone the wider political system.
Writing in The Atlantic during the election campaign, @jon_rauch expressed strong opposition to the conventional view of party leadership.
The very term party leaders has become an anachronism. … There no longer is any such thing as a party leader. There are only individual actors, pursuing their own political interests and ideological missions willy-nilly, like excited gas molecules in an overheated balloon. …
This is not only a problem of leadership and individual agency, but also a question of the nature of the political party as a viable system with collective agency and intelligence. Rauch continues
The political parties no longer have either intelligible boundaries or enforceable norms.
The relationship between the politician and the party has always been problematic – consider Winston Churchill who changed party allegiance twice before becoming party leader. But the root cause of this problem is unclear.
Political parties are what things look like when you put politicians in charge.— David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) August 3, 2016
@DavidAllenGreen or they are machines for turning people into politicians— Sean Owen-Moylan (@SeanOwenMoylan) August 3, 2016
Jonathan Rauch, How American Politics Went Insane (The Atlantic, July 2016)
Wikipedia: Party Leader (retrieved 4 Feb 2017)
Related posts
Political parties and organizational intelligence 1 (May 2012)
Political parties and organizational intelligence 2 (June 2015)