EA872 Weekly Blog Entry 7

How much is too much information?

We've all encountered people who share more than you wanted to know about their pet peeve or what have you. While we get through the encounter by nodding our head and making appropriate noises while figuring out an escape strategy what happens to enterprises whose architecture team gets caught in a never ending exercise of documenting the current state? The EA initiative probably goes up the chopping block as the powers that be cannot figure out what value EA is providing.

James (2006) in the Gartner article Just enough current-state architecture assesses the optimal level of current state documentation. James advocates iterative implementation of architecture and recommends developing the future state architecture first and to then document enough of current-state architecture to identify the gaps between it and the future state to plan for the migration. Organizations should heed this in order to focus on the value providing initiatives of the enterprise.


References

James, A. G. (2006, June). Just enough current-state architecture. Gartner id G00140767

EA872 Weekly Blog Entry 6

Never the twain shall meet?



James (2006) in the Gartner article titled "Making Technology Standards Work" analyzes the lament put forth by Enterprise Architects that technology standards defined are ignored.

Although the disadvantages of a diverse and complex technology portfolio are obvious to the
architects that try to contain it, in many instances the standards that they attempt to apply are
ignored, and they fail to change the way that projects work (James, 2006, p. 2).

The different perspective of the project team by the very nature of the work which has a tunnel vision is the explanation provided by James. The article recommends a key element of linking architecture with business benefits to counter this. This link would then provide the relevant context for the architecture and lets trade-offs be made between the benefits of architecture standards and the granting of standards waivers to projects. The article also points out the ways architects can make this connection effective.

This week's class readings had a thread on the importance of architecture having a connection to the projects on the ground. Failure would probably mean pie in the sky as far as attaining EA maturity.

References

James, A.G. (2006, February). Making technology standards work. Gartner id G00137199.

EA872 Weekly Blog Entry 5

Future State representation at the logical and implementation level

It's week 5 of EA872 and we've survived group analysis Part 1 submission. It's anyone's guess if we'll survive the future state architecture activities. The patterns, services, models,domains, components speed architecture benefits, templates for patterns and services and a starter kit for all this.

My head was spinning with the models, diagrams and tables and templates when I decided to take a break from my class reading. I read Conceptual, Logical, Physical : It is simple by John A. Zachman and was able to relax and get back my perspective. Without further ado, decided to do my weekly blog post.

Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.

References:

https://www.zachman.com/ea-articles-reference/58-conceptual-logical-physical-it-is-simple-by-john-a-zachman

EA872 Weekly Blog Entry 4

Is our current Organization Structure Conducive for EA to Function?

Burke et al (2011) in their "Enterprise Architecture program pitfalls: Don’t start with the current state" Gartner publication analyze the reasons enterprise architects start with current state and find that one of the reasons is a lack of mandate to develop the future state. What a sad state of affairs! Enterprise Architect is charged with the lofty goal of architecting the enterprise’s future state but does not have authority over the business, IT or any teams to get the job done. So who does have this authority? If the Chief architect had the same authority as a CEO would it solve this problem? Sometimes there is resistance to the very idea of Enterprise Architecture as the perception is they are trying to take over the world. Are we trying to fit in a completely different role into the traditional enterprise when really a whole new organization chart is needed to run, grow and transform the enterprise in this digital era?

EA872 Weekly Blog Entry 3

Dabbler or a Leader, What should Enterprises aspire to be?

Have you ever tried cooking with multiple pots on the stove trying to do everything at the same time? Why not use all the burners on the stove? It’ll make us 4* faster, right?  Wrong. In my quest for efficiency all I got was burns on my hand. 

Allega (2006) explains the purpose of developing an Anchor model, is to communicate the relationships between the highest-order entities inside and outside the company.

 “The Discipline of Market Leaders “ by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema is referred by Allega (2006), which lists the three generic competitive strategies as operational excellence, customer intimacy, and product leadership. Leading organizations excel in one of these generic competitive strategies, while maintaining industry standards in the other two. Many companies wallow in mediocrity by attempting to excel in all three.

While I tried my hand at too many things and have fading scars to remember my attempts, enterprises fade to mediocrity attempting the same. Thus it is critical to provide the business leaders with a big picture of the enterprise and EVN is one such model that Enterprise Architects can arm the business leaders with to lead their Enterprise to being a market leader. This is one of several informational aspects I gathered from this week’s EA872 readings which focused on understanding the business context.