Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

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...

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...

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. 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.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.

In my conversation with Gene Leganza, Forrester VP Research last week ( @gleganza), we spoke about how to address delivering technology in a consistent manner. It inspired me to write this post about our Solutions Council. Here goes:

How do you handle service requests in your IT organization?

Have you adopted an IT Service Management approach?

Can you confidently articulate standard solution architectures for commonly requested services?

In the past, we struggled with a lack of consistency in our technology solution delivery.  Even though we are a centralized IT department, clients received different solutions and services depending on who they contacted.  Imagine how confusing it was for our clients; they could get application solutions from one of LAMP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Lotus Domino application platforms.  Two clients with similar requests could get two different solutions based on which developer they talked to. This further added to the complexity of the application portfolio we manage – meaning more time spent on “keeping the lights on” and less on delivering new solutions.  Read more...

On August 11th, Gartner announced a “new approach for enterprise architecture” that they labelled “Emergent Architecture”.  I got a chance to read some responses from Todd Biske, Mike Rollings, and Dion Hinchcliffe.  Thanks for the great insights and commentary.

In the press release, Bruce Robertson, Gartner Research VP states the two characteristics of “Emergent EA”:

1. “Architect the lines, not the boxes – which means managing the connections between the different parts of the business rather than the actual parts of the business themselves.”
2. “It models all relationships as interactions via some set of interfaces, which can be informal and manual”

On characteristic 1. is if you only look at the connections between parts of the business, how can you look for opportunities to reduce complexity, increase efficiency and implement reusability? I believe enterprise architecture is about the whole organization and its environment, not just pieces of it. As an example, our EA practice encompasses IT Service Management (ITIL), Business Analysis (BA) and Program Management (PMO).

On characteristic 2. , again all this says to me is to take a “user experience” approach to describing the architecture. This is nothing new as far as I can tell … perhaps I am missing something?  Read more...

Andy Blumenthal wrote a great post “Adaptive Leaders Rule the Day“. In his post, Andy reviewed a Harvard Business Review July 2009 article “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis” and commented on the article’s insights on adaptive leadership.

I really liked Andy’s quote “Leaders need a proverbial “toolkit” of successful behaviors to succeed and even more so be able to adapt and create innovative new tools to meet new unchartered situations.”

Andy listed some of the successful behaviours in the “toolkit”.  I recommend you read the full article to get all of Andy’s insights. 

Here is the list of successful behaviours:

• “Foster adaptation”
• Stabilize, then solve
• Experiment
• “Embrace disequilibrium”
• Make people safe to question
• Leverage diversity

Taking a similar approach to my previous post on Generative EA Principles, I will explore and share how Andy’s list of behaviours fit with our EA practice (and maybe yours).  We have a long way to go to fully leverage the successful behaviours but having some clear names for what we have accomplished helps.  Thanks Andy!  Read more...

In my previous post, I suggested that integrating Kevin Kelly’s 8 “generatives” will help EA adoption (please read Kevin’s excellent article Better than Free for the details on each):

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility
• Embodiment
• Patronage
• Findability

This really got me thinking about how we approach introducing and maturing enterprise architecture in our organizations. How many of you made attempts to introduce EA practices and struggled in your organizations?  What  attracts clients to your EA service? Do you use a carrot or a stick? Why would people in your organization come to you for services? What makes your service better than free?

Can we take Kevin’s “generatives” and apply them as principles of our EA practice? This post describes how we can apply Kevin’s “generatives” as influencing guiding principles for delivering Enterprise Architecture.

Immediacy – Does your EA practice provide immediacy to facilitate solution delivery in your organization? Can your EA serve to deliver solutions quicker and in a supported, sustainable manner?  If your EA process takes weeks or months or even years, there is no immediacy for your clients and they will go elsewhere even if it costs them more. If we design our EA services to address the immediacy demand of our clients, we can deliver the immediacy generative. Applying our EA Guiding Principle “Reuse-Acquire-Create” will help.  Read more...

JP Rangaswami wrote an interesting post titled Mother of Invention. In it he discusses, Frank Zappa and piracy and as usual, he expands my understanding on this contentious topic. Thank you JP!

What really caught my eye was JP’s reference to Kevin Kelly’s article Better than Free. Kevin talks about the Internet being a super-distribution system where once a copy is introduced it flows freely forever.  So when everything is free or as close to free as possible, how do we make money? Kevin’s solution is pretty simple …

“When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.”

Next Kevin talks about “generatives”.  Here is his definition:

“A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time.”

Kevin proposes 8 “generatives” listed below (please read Kevin’s article for the details on each):  Read more...

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility

Mike Kavis posted another great piece on why we should use Enterprise Architecture. As always, Mike has some real gems in his post.  Here are a some:

• “It sounds to me like people have a technical solution and are now looking for a problem to solve with it.  It needs to work the other way around!”
• “Well, coming to the business with technical solutions asking for help to justify them with business drivers is not alignment.”
• “At this point the ROI should be much easier, because the solutions were driven by the problem statement(s), not the other way around.”
• “Without this alignment, IT will constantly struggle to sell technical solutions to the business and come up with appealing ROIs.”

With the recent economic situation, business leaders are looking more and more to IT leaders to help enable cost savings and business performance. In my regular meetings with my business colleagues, this is becoming a consistent theme. The only way this will happen is for IT leaders to sit with business leaders and understand their issues and problems.  Once this problem is understood, then the  IT leader can bring to bear the appropriate technology solution.  The ROI is put back on the business (where it belongs) and how the problem is solved not on the technology that enables the problem solving.  Read more...

First, thanks to everyone who contributed via the Shared Insights EANetwork. I originally posted this on September 16, 2007. I got swamped and did not post my list so here it is:

Trends and Impacts  Read more...

1. Trend – More stakeholders are connecting EA thinking (alignment of technology to support strategic goals) with business innovation and investments in change.
   Impact – EA will become embedded into the planning, procurement, implementation and delivery of services.
2. Trend – Enterprise Architects more rare that IT architects. Growing your own EA might prove to be more successful than recruiting one
   Impact – Coaching, mentoring and training of internal staff to become IT strategic thinkers will help grow Enterprise Architects. Is there a path? Project Technical Lead to IT Domain Architect to IT Solutions Architect to Enterprise Architect to Chief Architect?
3. Trend – More acquisition of COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) technologies that are build for configuration and integration instead of requiring customization
   Impact – Configurable technology allows more time for upfront Business Analysis to gather the right requirements and simpler, more manageable ongoing support and maintenance.

Thanks very much to Nick Malik for a great post “Leadership vs Management”

Interestingly, I have made the move from being the Senior Enterprise Architect to the Manager, Business Application Services. I completely agree with Nick about needing both leadership and management to successfully advance EA (as well as other initiatives). I am moving from a position of influence to a position with 25 direct reports! Daunting to say the least.

So taking the message of “listening” to heart (and to action), I am trying a weekly standup meeting with my new team of 25 IT Professionals (BAs, PMs, Sys Admins, Application Developers, BI Analysts and DBAs).

The question remains … so what happens to EA? I will work hard now to lead and manage my new team using EA as our guide posts.

Much, much more to come as I have so much to learn.