Recently, there has been several blog posts discussing what should and should not be done when building an EA practice. I thought I would review how we built our EA practice in our higher education organization and compare it to some of the other approaches. I have yet to see one definintive approach for all organizations. EA is a cultural thing and needs to be implemented in the context and culture of an enterprise.
We started thinking about Enterprise Architecture when the Institute developed a strategic initiative to leverage technology to transform, enhance and support teaching, learning, research and business at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. As we put together the business case for the initiative, the consultants helping us suggested we adopt an EA approach. Four staff members (including me) were selected to spend a week with John Zachman and Stan Locke taking Zachman’s EA Fundamentals course. Right away, I was hooked. When we returned, the Institute created an Enterprise Architect position to help plan and architect the strategic initiative. After a selection process, I was selected as our first Enterprise Architect. Read more...
I have followed the development of the the Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession with great interest over the past year. The group has built a strong following and gathered sufficient momentum to be a force for the advocacy of Enterprise Architecture as a profession. After laying out a mission, vision, goals and core values, the group published the Enterprise Architect’s Professional Oath. Over 1000 people made the commitment to the Oath and signed up.
I became aware of this initiative via Mike Kavis (@madgreek65) and Bob McIlree (@rmcilree) and the buzz in the Twitterverse (@CAEAP). Bob asked me to consider participating in the creation of the EA Professional Practice Guide. Here is the goal of the document:
The Enterprise Architecture Professional Practice Guide is being created as the leading business practice document for enterprise architects to advance their own practices, as well as forming a crucial reference set of information for education bodies.
Furthermore, this guide will be utilized in the Registered Enterprise Architect exam preparation and will cover a range of ethical, legal, financial, management, marketing and administrative issues. The essential knowledge needed for planning a thriving Enterprise Architecture practice under a vast set of scenarios will be created and maintained by industry leaders for the industry and the public. Read more...
This morning Jon Ayre (@EnterprisingA) tweeted:
#EAMantra (11) Failing to deliver perfection is not a crime. Failing to deliver is.
Something I totally agree with, especially if you have been following my blog and the theme of building an EA practice that delivers value using a virtual team.
Tyler Gooch (@tylergooch) then sent a response (Thank you Tyler!!) about The Cult of the Done by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark. This is very cool stuff! Here are the 13 statements:
The Cult of Done Manifesto Read more...
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
Last year, I wrote about the special debt I feel to Canadian soldiers that defended my birthplace – Hong Kong. I found more information about the Canadian troops who defended Hong Kong at the Veterans Affairs Canada website.
This year I would like to pay tribute to Company Sergeant Major John Robert Osborne, 1st Battalion The Winnipeg Grenadiers – awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously. His story and Victoria Cross citation can be read here. Sgt Major Osborn was the first Canadian to be awarded the Victoria Cross and 1 of 16 awarded in the Second World War. His bravery and selfless sacrifice symbolizes the Canadian spirit. Here is the ending quote of his citation:
Company Sergeant-Major Osborn was an inspiring example to all throughout the defence which he assisted so magnificently in maintaining against an overwhelming enemy force for over eight and a half hours, and in his death he displayed the highest quality of heroism and self-sacrifice.
For more about the defense of Hong Kong, please go to the Veterans Affairs Canada website – Canadians in Hong Kong. Read more...
Last Thursday Nov 6, 2009, I spent a valuable day at the Forrester Western Canadian IT Summit. The day began and ended with keynotes and in between there were 3 breakout tracks – CIO, EA and IT Ops. This post covers a keynote by Bobby Cameron on Marketing IT. I will write a separate post on Jeff Scott’s (@logicalleap) two sessions.
Morning Keynote – Driving IT Realization: The Marketing of IT – Bobby Cameron, VP and Principal Analyst, Serving CIOs
Here is my summary of Bobby’s presentation highlighting the 3 key points:
1. What key factors improve the perception that the IT organization is aligned to the business?
Bobby provided 3 pieces of research and a summary of key factors that keep IT a cost centre.
First, “CEOs – 75% are happy with IT overall – but they don’t expect IT to deliver much“. IT is not seen by CIO’s as a source of innovation or a source of process improvement. We even struggle being seen as capable of managing the people and assets under our control. (Me: we do not have the reliability of a utility yet) Read more...
I had a great phone call with Roger Sessions (@RSessions), CTO ObjectWatch a month ago about IT Complexity. Over the past few weeks, I got a chance to read about Roger’s approach Simple Iterative Partitions (SIP) in a series of white papers:
Some key points that resonated with me:
- Autonomous Business Capabilities (ABC)
- Mathematical Basis for Understanding Complexity
Years ago, we used a simplified model to articulate why we needed to build our Enterprise Architecture practice. The central premise of the argument was that as functionality increases so does complexity. We proposed using IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture to manage complexity. See the slides here.
Roger has published a new white paper – The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity on October 22, 2009. The main sections of the paper are: Read more...
- The Coming IT Meltdown – calculating the costs
- Cause of Failure – measuring IT complexity
- Designing Simpler IT Systems
- Impediments to Simplicity
- Call to Action
I attended a half day seminar offered to IT leaders in Vancouver today by Microsoft Canada. Essentially, this was the launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 to the Vancouver market. There were about 100 people in attendance.
Here is my Twitter stream from the session today … http://twitter.com/#search?q=leodesousa msft
The day began with an engaging keynote by Jim Carroll – Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert. Jim spoke laid out themes of :
- Run the business
- Grow the business
- Transform the business
Next, Jim provided examples from his consulting engagements to highlight the themes. One of Jim’s quotes was “Success comes to those who evolve.” Another quote, “Many kids going to elementary school will have careers in fields that don’t exist today. Think about a “location intelligence” professional.” With the huge growth of spatially related data, there is a real need for people skilled in location intelligence.
Jim also talked about the “new economy” typified by: Read more...
- A relentless focus on growth – changes in construction mgmt focused on green sustainable initiatives
- Speed to change product lifecycles – auto makers who can retool production lines in 10 days vs 10 months
Reading Roger Sessions (@RSessions) work on IT Complexity reminded me of a set of slides we created to articulate the value of IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture.
We (my colleague Dave Cresswell and I) used a simplified model to articulate why we needed to build our Enterprise Architecture practice. The central premise of the argument was that as functionality increases so does complexity. We proposed using IT Governance and Enterprise Architecture to help manage complexity. The slides resonated well with our senior leadership and in the many EA talks I have given over the years.
The example we use in the slides involves the change in functionality of collaboration services. (Note the curves shown are representative and not based on statistical data – so please no complaints about statisical significance) The slides show how collaboration functionality increased over time from green screen, text only email on the mainframe (IBM PROFS) through client server email (Lotus Notes) to fully web enabled collaboration spaces and community of practices. Unfortunately, the IT architectures used to deliver the new functionality increased in complexity at an even quicker rate. Where the two curves cross is a point of diminishing returns because more effort is spent managing the complexity resulting in no resources available to deliver the new functionality. Read more...
I added Roger Sessions, CTO of ObjectWatch to my blogroll today. I have been following Roger on Twitter @RSessions particularly his posts and discussions on IT Complexity and how it relates to IT project failures. On Thursday, Oct 8th Roger and I shared a conference call and agreed to investigate opportunities to collaborate on IT complexity based on Roger’s work on Simple Iterative Partitions.
I will be speaking with our staff and our IT faculty to see how we might be able to integrate lessons on complexity into courses and programs at BCIT.
Thanks for the insights Roger and I hope to contribute to the discussion. Keep it up!
I am writing about a topic that came up this week when working with my colleagues at the University of Alaska Office of IT. A common challenge all IT Service teams face delivering projects when there are huge operational demands. Here is the approach we took to address this critical and ongoing challenge in my Business Application Services team in IT Services, BCIT.
In Sept 2007, I took over as the Manager, Business Application Services at BCIT. For the first 4 months, I took a meet, listen and ask approach. I held one-on-one interviews with each of my team members (23 systems analysts in 3 teams). I setup regular meetings with all our key client stakeholders (Registrar’s Office, Finance, HR, Financial Aid, Student Services, Facilities, Alumni and others) around BCIT. I needed to hear from my team and our clients about the challenges they faced and their perceptions of our effectiveness in meeting commitments.
In all the meetings and interviews, I heard a common theme from… Read more...
- My team: “We have too much to do and can not keep up with the demand from our clients.”
- Our clients: “Your team is working hard but we have important projects that are not getting done on time.”