Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
It began with an octopus; wandered into an accidental remark about “a flocking of Boyds”; and then drifted off somewhat sideways from there. But seems that this crabwise shuffle may be leading somewhere useful – for my current explorations of…
Following on from the previous post ‘Sensemaking: Into the void‘, what’s a good everyday analogy or example on how to develop our skills in sensemaking and strategy? In particular, how to understand, apply and use the ‘sense, make-sense, decide, act‘…
Given that I’m reframing my work here as ‘maker of tools for change’, it seems worthwhile to republish from my now long-defunct Sidewise blog this 2010 post on some on the realities of change that must be acknowledged and addressed if…
What do architects do? And why? At this point we’d usually reach out for some apposite metaphor… And yes, by far the most common metaphor is ‘boxes and lines’, or ‘boxes and arrows’. If we take the most stereotyped, ‘boxy’ view…
EA is the diagrammatic description of the enterprise, not a figure of speech interpreted conveniently
EA should guide the transformation. A transformation architect would only make sure that that the transformation is based on EA and obeys principles.
That’s a large part of what I do, I guess – planting trees, metaphorical and literal. Why? Well, perhaps the best reason for doing so is in a lovely tale I came across the other day. One of the Oxford…
A great one-liner by enterprise-architect Jon Ayre: RT @EnterprisingA: Comparing #itarch with #entarch is like comparing your cooker with your house. Your cooker helps you to eat but your house is where you live It reminds me of the key tag-line…
A lovely one-liner and follow-up from Kevin Smith (of PragmaticEA / PEAF fame), in a Skype conversation earlier today: Is the EA the DJ? He doesn’t tell people how to dance. He provides the music for them to dance to. He sets the mood. He sets the tempo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq71rV2FXSI http://www.electronicarchitecture.co.uk Listen. Feel. Connect. Interact. Imagination. […]
Given the responses to my previous post ‘Guess I could do with some help here…‘, seems it’d be useful if I clarify a bit more what kind of help I most need. (Or we need, rather, as an industry and discipline: probably the only ‘I’-part here is that I seem to be one of the […]
A great conversation yesterday evening with a former colleague from Sydney, Robert Phipps. Rambling over a range of enterprise-architecture themes: about the distinctions between organisation and enterprise, about the role of values in the defining vision (or ‘venture’, as he put it – a useful term), about the flow of value around the shared-enterprise, and […]
Whilst at the AE-Rio 2011 enterprise-architecture conference, I had the pleasure of sitting through yet another presentation by John Zachman. (He’s the only presenter I know who can get away with reading every word of every slide on a very old-fashioned overhead projector. )
Yet much though I like him as a person, and […]
A great conversation yesterday with Australian facilitator Helena Read, around the word ‘belonging’, and how it links with vision and enterprise-vision.
In the enterprise, vision is the anchor for everything: the quality-system, the business-purpose, the enterprise itself. It’s a very human focus, literally emotive: “that which gets me out of bed in the morning”, and so […]