On Friday February 19, 2010, I underwent laser eye surgery (Intralase Sub-Bowman’s Keratomileusis) to correct my short sightedness. I have worn glasses since I was 6 years old and contact lenses since I was 16. Over the past 15 years, I developed an allergic reaction to the protein buildup on the contact lenses and had to restrict my use to sports only. This is a quantum leap forward for me and I am floored by the results – no more glasses! Thank you to my surgeon, Dr. Suren Sanmugasunderam, FRCS (C) and his team at London Eye Centre.
The evolution from squinting to see, to having thick, then thin lens glasses to contact lenses and now to laser eye surgery led me to think more about several topics:
Problem Management – as described by IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL):
A `problem’ is an unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents, and a `known error’ is a problem that is successfully diagnosed and for which either a work-around or a permanent resolution has been identified. Read more...
I was fortunate to be asked to participate as a mentor to a Computer Systems student in our Bachelor of Technology program this fall. This is a real honour and something that I value having the opportunity to do.
I graduated from BCIT in 1987 and the skills taught me by my instructors and my classmates set the tone for my career. Thanks to the BCIT Alumni Association and the BCIT Student Association for this opportunity.
Below is an interview I gave in the student newspaper, The Link:
Leo de Sousa may have a background in IT Services, but his advice on life – and how to balance – it can translate to students in any field
Long days. Late nights. Extra hours. Group projects. Debt.
BCIT students have a, shall we say, unique experience. For many, it’s the toughest period of their lives. Following dreams and getting credential many times means going in the hole financially and giving up life as you know it to pursue studies. It’s a big step, a big risk; you name it. Read more...
Building on my previous post Starting Your EA Practice – What roles would you pick?, this post looks at attributes of individuals and suggests some that have worked in our strategic practices of which Enterprise Architecture is one.
When my colleague and friend, Dave Cresswell and I started working towards building an EA practice, we coined the name “Strategic Practices”. Disciplines like Enterprise Architecture (Business Analysis/Architecture, Solutions Architecture), IT Security, Project/Program Management and Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (Risk Management) cut across all areas of an organization are all represented in the Strategic Practice group.
First we discussed the difference between skills and talents. Skills are critical for us to deliver services and it is management’s responsibility to ensure the people in their care have the skills to perform their duties. I put as strong focus on personal learning plans for my team to ensure that together, we plan to keep them current and advancing in their chosen field.
Our belief is that Talent is significantly more important than Skills – skills can be taught, talent is something a person brings with them.
Skills (examples) Read more...
- create complex technical solutions
- creating structured documents
- manage structured processes
Tonight, I had the privilege of being a guest lecturer on Enterprise Architecture for a class at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. My colleague Brian Hosier invited me to give an overview of EA for his students.
I had to do some serious chopping of my 2 hour workshop to get things down to a manageable timeframe. Even then, I felt extremely rushed and barely skimmed the surface of all that Enterprise Architecture is. The class went well and I got great questions from the students. I hope this short introduction to EA helped some of them think about the big picture.
As I was presenting, I realized how much our EA practices are IT influenced. This is a natural thing being that we grew EA out of IT and IT is where it primarily resides. As I presented some of the artifacts we developed, it became apparent that I need to rethink how to present EA to newbies. After a bit of theory and overview, I presented how EA can be applied strategically, tactically and then a bit on business architecture. The problem was that for each area except Business Architecture, my examples were very technology focused. Read more...
Early in 2009, a group of Enterprise Architecture thought leaders gathered together to begin a focused advocacy program for our profession. They created the Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession (CAEAP).
Vision:CAEAP seeks to be the organization responsible for the Enterprise Architecture Profession. In this capacity, CAEAP acts as the primary advocate for the Profession, addressing the public at large, enterprises the Profession serves, and the Profession itself, to which Enterprise Architects belong through their practice.
Mission:
CAEAP promotes the professional status of Enterprise Architects and works to ensure the legitimacy of the Profession by distinguishing it from other professions and non-professionals (consultants, employees, and supporting roles). CAEAP is the public face of the Profession and is further charged with maintaining its consistent view towards the public, enterprises, and its professional members. The aim is: Read more...
- Sustainability of the profession
- Create brand recognition for the profession
- Deliver consistency through accreditation
- Support professional autonomy
- AND provide answers for the public . . .
- Clarify in the public eye as to what a professional EA contributes
- Ensure the public’s trust in EA as a profession
- Assure the public they’re dealing with a competent EA professional
In early December, I spent 2 days at the Microsoft Canadian College Update. I sent Nick Malik (@nickmalik) a message and we met for lunch. I really enjoy catching up with other Enterprise Architects and Nick is top of my list. We talked about a broad range of topics like how EA can help with downsizing, EA models and data, Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Practice and Twitter.
The topic of forming an EA team came up. “How would you staff up an EA team?” Nick challenged me by asking “Would your first hire be an Enterprise Architect?” At first I thought, yes of course an EA office needs EA’s in it. Well not so fast … if the EA Office was being put together for the first time in an organization, what does it really need to do?
Show value early and often to the organization. In order to do this, an Enterprise Architecture team needs to gather data and a way to link into projects. Read more...
This is my review of this morning’s Architecture & Governance magazine webinar ”The State of EA: Is 2010 the Transformational Year?”
Presenters:
- George Paras, Editor-in-Chief, A&G, Managing Director, EAdirections – gparas@EAdirections.com
- Alex Cullen, Vice President, Research Director, Enterprise Architecture, Forrester Research – acullen@forrester.com
1. What is the current state of EA? Forrester conducted a survey of 416 IT professionals and found the following: Read more...
- Increasing awareness and acceptance of EA – this is change in that there is much more broad support for EA as a discipline in organizations
- EA teams are part of senior IT management – more focus at a senior level instead of a tactical level in IT (* true in my case moving from a staff EA position to a management EA position)
- Primary drivers for EA programs 1) better strategic planning 2) consolidation of technology 3) improve business agility4) enable business-IT alignment
- Infrastructure, Security and Application architectures are the most complete, next Integration and Information architecture are underway and business architecture is the least complete
- Where to architecture groups spend their time 1/2 time spent on non-project activities – supporting enterprise planning, strategic planning, collaborating with business and governance
Here are the Day 2 sessions linked into one blog post. Again, lots of good content and multiple sessions that got me thinking about how to leverage the Microsoft capabilities we already own. I wrote mini posts on each session and linked them here for your easy reference.
** Updated post with links to slide decks – Dec 21, 2009
Wednesday Dec 10th
Session 7 – Unified Communications Overview – slides
Session 8 – Office Communication Server Case Study
Session 9 – Windows Server 2008 R2 Strategy and Future Directions – slides
Session 10 – Live@edu Overview
Session 11 – Security Microsoft Strategy Overview – slides
Session 12 – Education Products Strategy – slides
Day 2 was another full day with plenty of excellent information. Thanks to Microsoft for hosting this excellent event. I now have a much clearer understanding of what Microsoft can bring to the table. Now, our task is to understand and architect a roadmap to leverage our newly created Active Directory, migrate to Exchange, create and deliver a SharePoint platform service and protect it all using a multi-layer security approach using ForeFront. Read more...
Yesterday, I spent the day with my colleagues from other Canadian Higher Education organizations being briefed on the new directions from Microsoft. As our organization is rapidly moving to leverage Microsoft solutions, this was an extremely valuable day. I wrote mini posts on each session and linked them here for your easy reference.
** Updated post with links to slide decks – Dec 21, 2009
Tuesday Dec 9th
Session 1 – Keynote – Anthony Salcito
Session 2 – Email in Education – Exchange 2010 – slides
Session 3 – Office Systems Futures – Office 14
Session 4 – Windows 7 and the Optimized Desktop – slides
Session 5 – Microsoft’s Virtualization Strategy and Futures – slides
Session 6 – Microsoft Learning
It was a very full day with plenty of new information. I will create another post to summarize Day 2 sessions. Enjoy!
Last week, I presented the accomplishments of my applications team in 2009. I was blown away by the number and the scope of the projects my team delivered to our community. I firmly believe that the separation of our operational duties from our project work enabled us to be so productive. While most people would celebrate the project teams |(and we do!), I want to acknowledge the key enabler of this success – our Duty Analyst role.
I blogged previously about our Duty Analyst role here.
Implementing a duty analyst role minimizes the operational interruptions to our team members working on projects. Providing project members focused time to work on project challenges and meeting milestones becomes easier without operational interruptions.
I am proud to say my team delivered on our operational responsibilities and completed 43 projects in 2009.
Here is the breakdown of projects my team delivered: Read more...
- Projects by Size : Small = 19, Medium = 14, Large = 10
- Projects by Governance : BCIT Executive = 3, IT Governance Team = 14, Business Applications Committee = 5, Departmental = 11, Operational = 10