Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Those who denigrate architecture as ‘only theory’ are seriously missing the point, because the role of architecture is theory – theory to guide the practice of design. Without theory to guide practice, all that we’d have is design that’s built on untested …
It’s time for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 467, features Tom’s excellent essay on value (value is one of those simple-seeming, but complex concepts). Jeremy Berriault‘s QA corner covers testing in difficult circumstances. I bat cleanup with a Form Follows Function segment discussing my post […]
Simple responses to complex situations are both seductive and dangerous. The difficulty in juggling lots of variables tempts us to employ abstraction so as to avoid being overwhelmed. Abraham Maslow’s observation, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”, applies. […]
“What’s the theory of enterprise-architecture?”, a colleague asked the other day. “Is there any kind of coherent and consistent theory behind it that holds it all together?” Short answer: no. Slightly longer answer: yes. Or sort-of, rather. Both no and yes…
Without a Theory, EA cannot be a discipline.
“Yes, we need theory in enterprise-architecture”, people will often say to me, “but which theory should it be? Should it be quantitative, everything defined in terms of metrics? Or should it be qualitative, and forget about metrics entirely? Which one…
What’s the role of theory in enterprise-architecture? Could there be such as thing as ‘the theory of enterprise-architecture’? Can we use that theory, for example, to separate useful EA models from useless ones? It seems that Nick Malik thinks so, as per…
One of my startup heroes Steve Blank wrote in a blog post that “value proposition is the fancy name for your product or service” It is with some trepidation that […]
Author: Alex Matthews – Twitter: @remembermytweet “Complexity theory predicts that we cannot rely on predictions.” This post is a series of excerpts from the following brilliant presentation on Complexity Theory. […]
This post is based on Chapter 3 of Gareth Morgan’s classic book Images of Organization (Sage 1986), which opens with the following question: “Is it possible to design organizations so that they have the capacity to be as flexible, resilient, and in…