#eavoices

Power, Process, Project, People

by

I keep writing about People, because I strongly believe that in the end the only thing which really matters is people, like in the Agile Manifesto: Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools.

In the past days I have seen plenty of interesting posts putting various concepts in the focus. One caught my attention and is very much worth to read:

RT @davidsprott: The shape of the next generation EA framework. t.co/dolaKQtb #CIO #ecosystem #services #entarch
— Tom Graves (@tetradian) 18. Februar 2013

This post followed some back and forth twittering and it was a very enjoyable discussion. It triggered some thinking I wanted to reflect already for a while, because every now and then I see an interesting tendency to market something as the one and only way on how to look at the world or solutions, be it IT or non IT.

Coming back to people I want to reflect on three forces especially which I observe every day and what I do to work with them or what I see in the typical Enterprise Architecture approaches. The three forces are (for each one definition from Oxford Dictionaries):

  • Power – The ability or official capacity to exercise control; authority.
  • Project – An individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim.
  • Process – A systematic series of mechanized or chemical operations that are performed in order to produce something. 


The definition of process and project is sometimes confusing if compared, so for simplification I typically differentiate by using project in the context of unique deliveries and process if the deliveries are repeatable. These three forces have a different effect on people, and each and every person has a different opinion what type of force he prefers, but in typical organizations all three forces exist in co-existence and influence each other. The key to all these three powers in the end is the People though and interesting enough they get quite often forgotten.

This is only the first post in a series, otherwise it is getting too long. The next post will be about power. If you have any input to give straight away then I am happy to read or hear from you.

Lessons from Lance – the future and Digital Doping

by

Recently several of us Gartner analysts were discussing the future of digitally enhanced humans. This covers a wide range from drugs that enhance cognition to prosthetics that enhance our physicality. With Lance Armstrong’s public fall from grace it is easy to see how artificial enhancement has infiltrated and tarnished professional sports. But I’m wondering about […]

The post Lessons from Lance – the future and Digital Doping appeared first on Mike Rollings.

Deep Thinking on The Architecture of Architecture: Meta-Architecture

by

As many of you have already have known, Enterprise Architecture and Architecture within the context of sociotechnical organization is going through what I believe a renaissance period.   The architecture field is moving to more of an interdisciplinary art and science.    Also many architects, myself included, have been trained on producing goal oriented systems.  This teleological approach based…

Cybernetic Entropy

by

The pioneers of cybernetics borrowed the concept of entropy from thermodynamics, the tendency of systems to become less organized over time.They regarded structure and information as ways of halting or reversing entropy, and information is sometime…

Enterprise Life Forms

by

In my last post “Details vs Context” I have touched the challenge to find the right balance between getting lost in the details and getting lost in the context. The frequent readers of my blog should by now know that my personal take on Enterprise Arch…

Details vs Context

by

In my last post I was writing about walking the talking, which is based on my experience one of the key elements for success. Some time ago I have written about the need to remember the larger context which is also reflected in my WISE SCAN post (E sta…

Walk the Talk

by

My last posts have been very much focused and following a red line, so now I am trying to pick up some loose ends. There is one thing which bugs me quite often when I am doing Enterprise Architecture work. There is way to much focus on talking about Enterprise Architecture. Something which is also reflected by following twitter post:

I suspect that the primary job role of Enterprise Architects is to argue with other EAs about what #entarch is. Prove me wrong, people.
— Kevin Brennan (@bakevin) 7. Februar 2013

My personal observation is that Architects actually discuss about Enterprise Architecture, but do in most cases not argue. This is a differentiation I find very important, because an argumentation chain would at least provide a red line why one approach is chosen over the other. By looking at the pure amount of frameworks and tools in the market and the amount of new players entering that space it is quite obvious that Enterprise Architecture is at the moment in a hype or fever situation. This can easily lead to total irrational decisions. On this topic I recommend to take a closer look at the Tulip Mania, some of the behaviours might also be seen in more recent crises.

Here (as mentioned before) I use GLUE as mapping tool for me. The real most interesting (and relevant) question for me always is: Where is a person stuck in the GLUE circulatory system.


And then I try to go into that position, placing myself onto the seat of that particular person to understand where the missing links are. If I manage to understand a portion of it I try to show the traces by using whatever terminology is approbiate for that particular person. Not GLUE, not a specific framework, but whatever language element helps. Sometimes indirect communication by others is the only way to succeed, sometimes I need to play over time. Invest today, harvest in a couple of month when a small trigger has grown into something powerful.

In most cases showing the connections to other information streams (in the circulatory system) allows the person at hand to see some possible answers to concrete problems which have not been solveable before. And there is one thing I know, then it is that I do not know anything, but what I know is that I am an Enterprise Architect. So in most cases I have literally no chance to give a correct concrete answer even though I am fairly often asked to give one, but I am able to help the information flow, to unblock the thinking, to link elements. There is my focus and that enables others to bring their great knowledge to the game and solve problems I would not have dreamt of being solved.