Understanding your enterprise architect

Over at CIO, they've got a great article for the managers of enterprise architects. Is one new to your company? They suggest following these simple rules:

1. Establish clear goals and expectations before day one.
2. Introduce the EA to the key players at a single meeting, no later than day two.
3. Run blocker for your EA.
4. Don't expect your EA to drive the business.
5. Your EA is not just the über-tech-geek.

SOA needs supporting architecture

Dan Rosanova recently wrote a post at CIO about how many companies often adapt SOA because it is what many companies are interested in when starting architeture. However, he notes that while SOA is a good thing, it may not perform to its higest potential if there aren't other architectural software structures in place to support it. Read the full article here.

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."

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.

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!

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?

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?

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?

Evolve EA: Best of 2008

With 2008 drawing to a close, we're going to share the best articles of the year. We look forward to keeping you up to date on enterprise architecture in 2009!

Microsoft’s Enterprise Architecture Toolkit (EATK)
Types of Enterprise Architecture
FEMA Gives EA Subcontract to REI and IBM
What is the role of a Enterprise Architect in a programme?
Putting the 'E' in TOGAF

Sun Microsystems Value Proposition

James McGovern highlights in his latest post in Enterprise Architecture how he has recently switched IDEs away from Eclipse and towards Netbeans. James believes that Sun Microsystems does not do a good job of selling their value proposition. Do you agree?

What are the Benefits of Enterprise Architecture?

It seems as if upper management still doesn’t quite understand the benefits of EA. So here’s a post from Shrikant Mulik on his blog in which he lists some business-related benefits of EA taken from a research briefing written by Jeanne Ross and Peter Weill. I’ve listed them below.

The business-related benefits include the following:

• shared business platforms - greater data sharing and integrated process standards
• senior management and business unit management satisfaction
• strategic business impact - operational excellence, customer intimacy, product leadership and strategic agility

What to Put in your First Release of EA?

Tony Abel, CEO & Chief Solutions Architect at dotNet Framework Solutions, mentions in this post on CIO Knowledge Base that a good enterprise architecture model always starts with the business element in order to encompass the entirety of the enterprise. Tony always begins his projects with top-management so that they can be more educated to the essences of enterprise architecture. Do you have a similar process in your organization?

More Findings from the Infosys Survey

Infosys recently completed their 3rd annual survey on Enterprise Architecture which you can view here. Sohel Aziz brings up some interesting findings in this post on the Infosys blog when he mentions:

One of the key findings is that participants of the survey saw Enterprise Architecture as a capability that was core to their business and inherently part of their organization's crown jewels. However, given the daunting set of activities that most Enterprise Architecture functions have to execute today, the opportunity to work with ESPs and enlist them to execute some of these activities is real. In other words, some activities (the more tactical ones), can be outsourced to a strategic vendor partner.

Read the full post here.

Enterprise Architecture is Essential to Protect Government Networks from Cyberattacks

This post on GCN discusses how EA plays an integral part on stopping cyberattacks from occurring within government networks and computers. Ron Ross, a National Institute of Standards and Technology senior computer scientist mentions:

“When I got into actual discussions, I turned my view around to the point to where I think we can’t be successful as security professionals unless enterprise architects are successful on their end. Enterprise architecture, I believe, is going to drive the ultimate success of protecting our critical infrastructures.”

Read the full article here.

No SmallTalk in Enterprise Architecture

James McGovern’s has an interesting post on Enterprise Architecture this morning. He explains how even though Wall Street has failed the consumer, the blame should be placed on the consumer themselves because they didn’t take the time to know better.

He applies this same methodology in Enterprise Architecture. Even though sales people are pitching SmallTalk in the enterprise, James claims that the marketplace knows better. I guess time will only tell.

Money Savings Tips on EA

This post on Agile Enterprise Architecture discusses how organizations can save thousands of dollars by starting with what everybody wants to know, the to-be architecture instead of the as-is architecture. Switching to as-is architecture, might anger the enterprise sales reps though as this model does not benefit enterprise architecture consultants.

SOA Governance

I recently came across an interview with enterprise architecture blogger Todd Biske, who talks about his new book SOA Governance. In part one and part two of his interview with Loraine Lawson at IT Business Edge, he gives some great insight on governance and SOA solutions. Enjoy!