Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

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:

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...

Session 12 Jon Perera, GM Strategy, Education

Higher Education studies about students and institutions. Looking at broad trends and their impacts on education delivery. Microsoft is making a commitment from a number of fronts – education software, programs and policy & advocacy.

Interaction with over 300,000 schools across 115+ countries and 900 dedicated full time MS employees working in this area.  MS invests $485M USD in Partners in Learning.

Higher Education Approach

• engaging student, empowering educators
• enabling infrastructure agility
• fostering research & community

Software Roadmap  Read more...

• divided between servers and services (software and services)
• tiers : applications, developer tools, programming model, application services, relational database, operating system, systems management
• academic toolkit (coming Jan 2010) – commitment to deliver MS Office with Higher Ed capabilities
  • interactive classroom (integrated PowerPoint and OneNote) – this is an add-in for PowerPoint and OneNote, cool interactivity between faculty and students
  • Semblio for digital content (packager for content) <- very interesting for our faculty includes assessment tools and powerful simulations – requires a client install for the Semblio player, web player by fall 2010 (this is a Silverlight platform)
  • mathematics (embedded into Word)

Session 6 Chris Pirie, GM, Microsoft Learning Marketing and Sales Mgmt

The Skills Imperative – bridging the skills gamp and increasing deployment – 3 pillars

1. Digital Literacy – reaching the masses through technology readiness
2. IT Academy Program – reaching future tech leaders through competency and career enablement
3. Commercial Gold Certified Training – driving deployment through career enhancement

Channels for Microsoft Learning

1. Extended Classroom
2. Online Learning
3. Certifications

Provided some stats on aging IT workforce, global IT employment growth about why this is important to Microsoft

The Microsoft Ecosystem in Canada http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship (IDC report)

IT Academy Overview – BCIT might want to consider joining http://www.microsoftitacademy.com

• essential level – digital content for Digital literacy, Operating System and Office applications
• advanced level – supports content for Office, Server and Developer products
• will be part of the Campus Agreement in 2010

Jeff Johnson – IT Academy Area Lead North America

Diploma/Degree + Certification = Career Advantage

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...

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!

Serge Thorn wrote an excellent post called “Development of an Enterprise Architecture Communication Plan“. I really enjoyed the read and completely agree that communication is a key success factor for the success of any enterprise architecture practice.

In the post, Serge set the stage by making a case for why a communication plan is key:

“Communication significantly impacts how IT is perceived by the organization, and therefore it plays a crucial role in the successful positioning of IT as an internal partner.”

“Effective communication is part of the overall plan for management of an Enterprise Architecture Program.”

Next, Serge lays out the key steps in developing an EA Communication Plan with supporting artefacts:

• Stakeholder General Communication
• General Information Needs
• General Communication Tools
• Communication Matrix
• Communicaton Planning
• Implementation Steps

Building on Serge’s post, let’s explore how we create communication plans in IT Services at BCIT.  My colleague, Dave Cresswell developed a template for project communication plans that we use for communication planning for large projects and our ongoing strategic practices like enterprise architecture, project/program management and business analysis. I will explore the steps to creating the plan next.  Read more...

We are interviewing candidates for the Manager of our Program Management Office this week. These unfortunate economic times seem to generate a high number of quality applicants. Not so good for them but really good for us.

I approach an interview as an opportunity for the selection committee and the applicant to learn from each other. Learning about applicant’s experiences and the organizations they work in provides insight into what is going on in industry.  Recently, we began asking our applicants to make a short presentation. This is a great way to see how the person communicates concepts and ideas as well as handling questions.

Inevitably, there are always gems that the person communicates. When I hear them, I write them down, take back the idea to my team to implement quickly. Here are some ideas:  Read more...

• When an item in a project status report goes to a “yellow” state, only let it remain there for two weeks. Either it is resolved and moves to “green” or it needs more attention and moves to “red”
• Sometimes you run a project using “plexecution” which means you doing planning and execution at the same time … we do this a lot!

I am attending the SunGard HE Summit Conference in Philadelphia, PA this week. I taught a 2 hour EA Intro workshop, that I will blog on later and am on a panel session about our work in redesigning the Student information system using SOA and UX.

I am trying something new at this conference; using Twitter as my notetaker (my Twitter name is leodesousa). I am using my own tag #sghes09 and tweeting on the content of the sessions I attended. I will be using TwitterSearch to pull all of my tweets together and see if I can get a chronological log of my conference experience and learnings. Note SunGard HE is on twitter and are using the #sghesummit tag. Stay tuned …

Here is the Twitter Search to get my timeline of notes (I messed up a couple times with my personal tag):

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sghe09+OR+sghes09

I am at the point in my career where I feel the need to get a Masters degree to advance my career. The question is which one to go for? I have been asking friends and colleagues so I thought I would ask all of you.

Here are my criteria for the program:

• suitable for a senior IT leader who is working to move up to a CIO/CTO level
• focused on Enterprise Architecture and Technology Management
• offered in part time mode over several years
• delivered in an blended online/F2F delivery mode
• some residency portions would be good because I enjoy F2F interaction
• looking to start the program in September 2009

Please post any suggestions as comments.  Thank you for helping me!