Seven rules of business alignment

Alan Inglis at Cutter Consortium recently gave seven points that were important to an operating model for business alignment. They are:

• Alignment among all parties involved in business change is the issue: the business consists of multiple parties that need to be aligned; IT is just one of these parties.

• The starting point for alignment is communication.

• Enterprise architecture is a vehicle for facilitating alignment. It provides an information base that shows us where we are and allows us to assess potential futures.

• Enterprise architecture as an approach has a part to play in business strategy, business change, and its traditional home in IT.

• Enterprise architecture provides tools to understand, plan, and govern change, but for effective delivery, it must be integrated with program management.

• The information, stakeholders, and processes used to manage alignment through enterprise architecture are different but related for business strategy, business change, and IT. The change management organization must draw on people from across the organization at all levels.

• While alignment must be driven from "the business," the business side may not always be best equipped to do this. If this is the case, it may need support in the form of "business architecture as a service."

Evolution of Video Game Business Models

From CNET.com, the enterprise software market has been going through a product-to-service transformation for a number of years. One clear representation of this is the boom in open source and software as a service, both of which are built on a different value curve in relation to typical enterprise licensing. Writer Dave Rosenberg goes on, the game market is at the beginning of an evolutionary path--moving from purely packaged games played on consoles to browser-based free-to-play and hybrid-hosted scenarios.

With free-to-play and open source the norm for video game software, where are these business models headed? We'd like to hear your thoughts.

SOA is Not Dead

The figures from our latest poll show us 60% of enterprise architects believe that SOA is indeed, not dead. Do you agree with these figures?

EA: The ability to manage change

In a recent article at Computing SA, they look at how architecture is just as important for an enterprise as it is for other things, such as bridges and skyscrapers. Many organizations failed to recognize this as their enterprises grew, and as a result, they were poorly structured. This particular article looks at how HR departments can grow and adapt enterprise architecture.

They look at how employees roles can be defined:

* Role accountability matrix: Showing where each person is responsible, accountable, consulted or informed. Such an approach allows management to determine ideal staffing levels with 100% precision. This aligns departmental and divisional staffing requirements with budgets, allowing absolute precision and accountability.
* Deriving and associating all supporting documents electronically and automatically with the person’s role, including job description, performance appraisal and performance against balanced scorecard.

CIO: The Case Against Cloud Computing

It seems that everyone's jumping on the bandwagon for cloud computing--but not just yet. CIO has come out with their case against this movement. According to CIO, they see that there are 5 impediments to cloud computing, and they are:

Current enterprise apps can't be migrated conveniently
Risk: Legal, regulatory, and business
Difficulty of managing cloud applications
Lack of SLA
Lack of cost advantage for cloud computing

What do you think? We're very interested to see what CIO has to say in their subsequent posts. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

2009 Focus for EA

In a recent article by James McGovern, he pointed out that companies are focusing too much on the processes and loosing the human aspect of the enterprise. He also believes that IT processes are not truly saving businesses money, and is certainly not getting more efficient. Do you believe this is true for EA? Do enterprises need to focus more on the human aspects of EA?

Take our Poll: Is SOA dead?

We’ve gotten quite some responses from our LinkedIn group members in a recent discussion thread, and so here is a quick poll you can take on whether or not you believe SOA is dead. We’ll be posting the results next Friday. Happy polling!

Metastorm ProVision Used by Delta

Delta's IT professionals have adopted Metastorm ProVision for all of their Enterprise Architecture needs. An article at ITworld.com goes into the specific processes behind Delta's decision to go with Metastorm ProVision. A statement by a Delta professional properly relayed the reasoning behind going with something new and different with EA,

"Start modeling your environment and showing the impact of conflicting strategies before you’re engaged officially, using whatever published documentation you can. Once you gain the support of your most visible leaders, brag, brag, brag. Others will soon want to be on that same bandwagon of success, able to effectively plan and execute any strategy.”

What do you think of this quote? Do you see your company moving forward with EA technologies?

Worst practices of Enterprise Architects

James McGovern recently posted a list of the ten worst practices of enterprise architects. Here are his top 5:

1. Instead of focusing on perception management, concentrate on becoming a skilled negotiator. We need to strike balance between technical complexity and business needs. Don't just change perception, focus on reality.

2. Spread the wealth. Enterprise architects who are the single source of knowledge on a given topic within an enterprise is dangerous. We all need to plan for when we all get thrown under the bus and the best way to do this is to make all decisions transparent and all communications open.

3. Governance is not about financial controls but is all about a behavior model. Command and control doesn't work, neither does design by committee. Remember that the best architectures are realized by self-organizing teams.

4. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Enterprise architecture is not about posturing and hand waving. It is important to understand your limitations and ask for help when you don't have a clue.

5. Think like a developer. Way too many architects throw daggers at developers, yet we haven't thought about what it is like to walk in their shoes. By using minimalist architecture approaches such as keeping things simple, you increase the odds that the code will be as high quality as the architecture.

For the complete list, click here. Were there any practices you noticed missing from the list?

Will you pay for open source in 2009?

It seems that more open source applications will cost in 2009, will you pay? Infoworld has an interesting response to CNET's open source ideas that definitely deserves a good read. Most people think that open source means free, but CNET disagrees.

What are your thoughts?

Free versus paid offers to completely different business models and it will be interesting to see how each hold up in the upcoming year.

Share with us your comments here or on LinkedIn.

What is Enterprise Architecture?

Is there universal definition for EA? Chris Potts from CIO.com recently answered this question found on LinkedIn in this post. Here’s the question:

Do you think we need to have a universally agreed definition of Enterprise Architecture? If so what do you think it should be, in one sentence, and why?

Chris states that there is really no agreed definition of EA, but it is very important to understand what business executives think the two component words mean. Many people mistakenly believe that the term “Enterprise” means that EA has something to do with technology, when only IT at times only represents 21 percent of a company’s operating costs. So instead of coining both terms, Chris has instead summed up his definition of EA in one sentence.

"The art or science of designing and constructing undertakings, especially bold or difficult ones, and of the readiness to be involved in them; the style of such undertakings."

What’s your definition of EA?

SOA is dead

Anne Thomas Manes recently declared SOA dead. This failed experiment was suppose to reduce companies costs and increase their agility. But as we've seen the economy fall, it has not held up to its promises.

The demise of SOA is tragic for the IT industry. Organizations desperately need to make architectural improvements to their application portfolios. Service-orientation is a prerequisite for rapid integration of data and business processes; it enables situational development models, such as mashups; and it’s the foundational architecture for SaaS and cloud computing. (Imagine shifting aspects of your application portfolio to the cloud without enabling integration between on-premise and off-premise applications.) Although the word “SOA” is dead, the requirement for service-oriented architecture is stronger than ever.

What do you think about the current state of SOA? Is it indeed dead?

Top Tech Resolutions of 2009

Moving forward in 2009, its time to work better with less. Infoworld.com stripped 2009 down to the bare essential goals that all companies should aim for this year. Among them, get out of old IT dogma and archaic thinking. This business climate will leave old thinkers in the dust. Don't settle for less just because you have to work with less. Think future think progress. Definitely read their resolutions and add a few of your own.

The Importance of Enterprise Architecture

David Longworth does a great job of discussing the importance of Enterprise Architecture in this latest article in CIO. The major theme is summed up by this quote,

“For EA to move beyond its -early-adopter phase, more architects looking at the bigger picture and less navel gazing and protectionism is the order of the day -- and that will be led by the CIO”

Take a couple of minutes to go over the article. Do you agree that more architects are looking at the bigger picture?