Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that business strategy work is often about constrained thinking. Thinking “inside the box” is nearly always rewarded well. After all, the person giving the rewards lives in the same box. One of the most pernicious kinds of constrained thinking is “brand thinking.” That is the notion that the value…
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ZACHMAN CERTIFIED
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We are proud to announce our 4-day, hands-on workshop in Colorado Springs!
This 4-day training course is designed to build an understanding of the concepts of Enterprise Architecture and develop a sense of urgency for implementing those concepts in a modern enterprise. The Level 1 Zachman Certified™ – Enterprise Architect Associate course gives today’s Enterprise Architects the opportunity to strengthen their skills as well as broaden their understanding of industry trends and the use of The Zachman Framework™. This course is designed to teach the science of EA- what things exist in the Enterprise, about the ontology, and then equip Enterprise Architects to make their own methodological choices.
• You can register for any course or seminar by clicking the register button. All payments made on-line are to be made in USD.
• Prices stated here DO NOT include taxes of any kind. Import duties and/or local taxes/GST/VAT, if applicable, are NOT INCLUDED in prices and must be borne by the registrant.
• Confirmation of registrations will be subject to availability and timely receipt of payment.
• Registrations are transferable within your organization (to a colleague) on request until 2 days before the event date.
• On-site registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis and will be accepted ONLY if seast are available.
• All confirmed, but unpaid, registrations need to be paid at the venue.
• For cancellation, please refer to the “Cancellation Policy” section below.
• Registration allows us to use the name of your organization in our future marketing activities as our customer.
| Credit Cards | We accept all major credit cards: |  |
| Purchase Order | Please select the “Pay Later” option at checkout, and select “Purchase Order” or “Invoice Me.” |
• All “early bird” discount offerings require payment at the time of registration and before the cut-off date.
• Any discounts offered (including team discounts) must be paid in advance.
• All discount offerings may not be combined with any other offer.
The following cancellation fees apply for cancellation of registrations received in writing via fax, email or phone:
• 25 days prior to the scheduled date: 10% of total the registration fee will be levied to cover administration costs. In addition, a refund charge of $25 USD is also applicable.
• 15 days prior to the scheduled date: 20% of total the registration fee will be levied to cover administration costs. In addition, a refund charge of $25 USD is also applicable.
• 5 days prior to the scheduled date: no refund of monies paid.
• Registrations are transferrable within your organization (to a colleague) on request until 2 days before the event date.
• Note: the above cancellation policy is applicable for confirmed but unpaid registrations as well. There will be NO exceptions to this policy for any reason.
Zachman International reserves the right to postpone or cancel an event, to change the location of an event. In the event that Zachman International postpones a conference, delegate payments at the postponement date will be credited towards the rescheduled date. If the delegate is unable to attend the rescheduled event, the delegate will receive 100% credit representing payments made towards a future Zachman International event or you may send a replacement. No refunds will be available for cancellations or postponements.
Zachman International is not responsible for any loss or damage as a result of substitution, alteration, postponement, or cancellation of an event due to causes beyond its control including without limitation, acts of God, natural disasters, sabotage, accident, trade or industrial disputes, terrorism or hostilities.
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|
ZACHMAN CERTIFIED
|
We are proud to announce our 4-day, hands-on workshop in Colorado Springs!
This 4-day training course is designed to build an understanding of the concepts of Enterprise Architecture and develop a sense of urgency for implementing those concepts in a modern enterprise. The Level 1 Zachman Certified™ – Enterprise Architect Associate course gives today’s Enterprise Architects the opportunity to strengthen their skills as well as broaden their understanding of industry trends and the use of The Zachman Framework™. This course is designed to teach the science of EA- what things exist in the Enterprise, about the ontology, and then equip Enterprise Architects to make their own methodological choices.
• You can register for any course or seminar by clicking the register button. All payments made on-line are to be made in USD.
• Prices stated here DO NOT include taxes of any kind. Import duties and/or local taxes/GST/VAT, if applicable, are NOT INCLUDED in prices and must be borne by the registrant.
• Confirmation of registrations will be subject to availability and timely receipt of payment.
• Registrations are transferable within your organization (to a colleague) on request until 2 days before the event date.
• On-site registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis and will be accepted ONLY if seast are available.
• All confirmed, but unpaid, registrations need to be paid at the venue.
• For cancellation, please refer to the “Cancellation Policy” section below.
• Registration allows us to use the name of your organization in our future marketing activities as our customer.
| Credit Cards | We accept all major credit cards: | |
| Purchase Order | Please select the “Pay Later” option at checkout, and select “Purchase Order” or “Invoice Me.” |
• All “early bird” discount offerings require payment at the time of registration and before the cut-off date.
• Any discounts offered (including team discounts) must be paid in advance.
• All discount offerings may not be combined with any other offer.
The following cancellation fees apply for cancellation of registrations received in writing via fax, email or phone:
• 25 days prior to the scheduled date: 10% of total the registration fee will be levied to cover administration costs. In addition, a refund charge of $25 USD is also applicable.
• 15 days prior to the scheduled date: 20% of total the registration fee will be levied to cover administration costs. In addition, a refund charge of $25 USD is also applicable.
• 5 days prior to the scheduled date: no refund of monies paid.
• Registrations are transferrable within your organization (to a colleague) on request until 2 days before the event date.
• Note: the above cancellation policy is applicable for confirmed but unpaid registrations as well. There will be NO exceptions to this policy for any reason.
Zachman International reserves the right to postpone or cancel an event, to change the location of an event. In the event that Zachman International postpones a conference, delegate payments at the postponement date will be credited towards the rescheduled date. If the delegate is unable to attend the rescheduled event, the delegate will receive 100% credit representing payments made towards a future Zachman International event or you may send a replacement. No refunds will be available for cancellations or postponements.
Zachman International is not responsible for any loss or damage as a result of substitution, alteration, postponement, or cancellation of an event due to causes beyond its control including without limitation, acts of God, natural disasters, sabotage, accident, trade or industrial disputes, terrorism or hostilities.
The Northern Virginia Technology Council’s (NVTC) Digital Strategy Committee (#nvtcdigstrat) recent event regarding Digital Strategy and Public Safety, featuring Richard R. Bowers – Chief, Fairfax Fire Department – revealed several very interesting and useful challenges for the NOVA business community.Not least of which was the current challenges around focused, resourced digital strategy planning across the County constituent agencies, and among local jurisdictions.Many targeted capabilities and improvements in “front-end” digital tools, outreach and engagement, plus initiatives on the “back-end” to handle system-specific data and information management are certainly underway, but information-sharing among the public safety stakeholders – businesses, government and the public – remains a strategic planning, governance and education hurdle to address. In other words, a B2G2C digital strategy challenge.NVTC Digital Strategy with Fairfax Fire Chief Richard Bowers; L-R, Patrick Smaldore, David Yang, Shilo Thomas, Chief Richard Bowers, Ted McLaughlan“Simplicity” was a key concept – that seems hard to maintain in the first responder settings, particularly with the profusion of both new technology equipment and situational data. Chief Bowers illustrated the challenge with local EMS responders – on route or on scene -having to quickly use and interact with at least 5 separate kinds of equipment:
The variety of interfaces, variety of data granulation, variety of authentication methods – it all adds up to what can be a burdensome expectation on responders, which creates higher risk in areas of data quality and security, process coordination and mission efficiency. This hinders, therefore, the ability of the entire responder community to deliver optimal outcomes – in spite of the number and types of technologies available and in use.Furthermore, as the technologies available to both the responders and the public become more pervasive, easy to operate and use – for collecting or contributing incident reporting, sensory feedback and overall situational awareness data – it’s simply too difficult to add these inputs to the mix in a way that avoids information overload, or worse, information degradation or errors. There’s no common information architecture that anticipates a proliferation of device inputs, mobile and social channels.A standard “dashboard” visualization service for use in the field, to quickly access the various systems and growing information sources, was also mentioned as a highly-desirable capability – particularly a dashboard to sensitive systems and protected information in a BYOD environment – i.e. on personal cellphones or tablets. A related need surfaced above the actual dashboard of the response vehicles and fire engines – actually having “heads up” display on the windshield of incident information, particularly GPS and route data.Fairfax 2015 Police and Fire GamesThe Committee was also briefed on the upcoming World Police and Fire Games, coming to Fairfax County at the end of June this year (2015). It’s anticipated that over 12,000 athletes and family/guests (over 30,000 in all) will attend the games, and that Fairfax County will experience tremendous global attention, regional pride and local economic benefit from hosting the event. Over 2000 volunteer slots remain open, along with many sponsorship opportunities for businesses, organizations or individuals. The Fairfax 2015 Games Website ( http://fairfax2015.com/ ) maintains all information for athletes and all other participants, from local accommodations and event venues, to a robust social community and online marketplace.The NVTC Digital Strategy Committee looks forward to more collaboration sessions with the Northern Virginia public safety and First Responder community, and will continue to support information-sharing about B2G2C digital strategies.Thanks to the NVTC event sponsors, speakers, coordinators and volunteers, including:
NVTC Digital Strategy Committee Sponsors:
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More than a few years ago, my son and I were watching one of the Harry Potter movies when Professor Snape came on the screen. My son said, "Oh I’ve seen that actor before, what’s he been in?" I replied, "That’s Hans Gruber from Die Hard, played by Alan Rickman."
My son looked at me with the awe that a father dreams of, and said, "How did you pull that out?" I’m sure this was his nice way of
I’ve been asked a number of times over the years if I can explain the theory of Enterprise Architecture. I decided recently to reopen that idea. It’s not a new discussion. I refer to Tom Graves post on the Theory of EA from 2012 where he posits that the theory of EA, if one were…
What is and why would we need a reference business map? For the purpose of this, a business map is the functional organisation of an enterprise while a reference business map is a business map that is generic enough to apply to most industries. &n…
In my post From Convenience to Consilience – “Technology Alone Is Not Enough” (October 2011), I praised Steve Jobs for his role in the design of the Pixar campus, whose physical layout was intended to bring different specialists together in serendipitous interactions.
Thanks to @jhagel and @CoCreatr, I have just read a blogpost by @StoweBoyd commenting on a related project at Google to build a new Googleplex. Because this is Google, this is a bottom-up data-driven project: it is based on a predicted metric of coincidensity, which is sometimes defined as the likelihood of serendipity.
With the right technology (for example, electronic monitoring of the corridors and/or tagging of employees), a corporation like Google can easily monitor and control “casual collisions of the work force”.
But as Ilkka Kakko (@Serendipitor) points out, such measures of coincidensity cannot be equated with true serendipity. I wonder whether Google will be able to correlate casual meetings with enhanced knowledge and understanding, and measure the consequent quantity and quality of innovation? And then reconfigure the campus to improve the results? Hm.
However, the principle of designing physical spaces for human activity rather than for visual elegance is a good one, as is the notion of evidence-based design. Form following function.
Stowe Boyd, Building From The Inside Out (February 2013)
Paul Goldberger, Exclusive Preview: Google’s New Built-from-Scratch Googleplex (Vanity Fair, February 2013)
Ilkka Kakko, Are we reducing the magic of serendipity to the logic of coincidence? (April 2013)
The most common concern our customers voiced in 2014 was the unexpected outcomes of Agile projects. They don’t talk about failure as such. But they do talk about loss of consistency; inability to govern; lack of coordination AND THE INCREASING TIME TO MARKET caused by these precise issues.
I was struck by the results of the Agile Adoption Experiences Survey 2014 published by Scott Ambler. The really significant result to me is that 40% of respondents rates their organizations adoption of Agile as neither a success or a failure. Add to this the categories of Failure, Great Failure and Too early to tell and you have 58% that are not successful! This synchs with my customer feedback referred to above.
The advice my colleagues and I give when customers approach us looking for answers to these questions, is to look at how architecture is integrated into Agile projects. And there are some key areas that we look for in our assessments:
1. Is there a good reference architecture and associated contextual patterns?
2. Are there clear policies attached to work products together with the rationale?
3. Are developers and architects working as a community of interest to evolve the reference architecture, patterns and policies?
4. Are the reference architecture, patterns and policies integrated into the tooling and the architecture runway?
5. Is the architecture runway model based – allowing it to provide a reusable design time platform to be evolved by projects?
Agile projects can be successful in an enterprise situation. But architecture and governance need to be coordinated for consistency and mechanisms (automation) enforced to ensure consistency.
I wonder why the Agile Adoption survey didn’t ask any questions along these lines?
It has been quite a while since I last posted here and I am very sorry for that. There is so much I want to do and share with the Enterprise Archtecture community which just piles up on a long (very long, indeed) list of things. Among quite some posts …
This is a typical artefact from an architect: It consists of the typical modelling constructs found in those work products from architects: squares, blocks, rectangular things stacked on each other. For many people, even architects I am afraid, architecture is more or less synonymous with stacking blocks in layers. The work products in TOGAF are […]
2015 is an anniversary year for Enterprise Architecture. It is 40 years since Richard Saul Wurman coined the phrase “Information Architecture” — in 1975. Information Architecture became Information Systems Architecture, and then Enterprise Architecture. I predict that enterprise architects will use this anniversary to reflect on the history of our discipline and its position within the Read more