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:

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

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

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...

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...

I borrowed a great book from a friend of mine who read it as part of her Masters program.  Leadership is an Art by Max De Pree is a must read for anyone who aspires to a leadership role. The book is short and easy to read. The best part are the real gems that can be applied immediately.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book:

• The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.  The last responsibility is to say thank you. In between, a leader is a servant and a debtor
• Peter Drucker said “Efficiency is doing the right thing. Effectiveness is doing the thing right” (interesting how this quote ties into what I have been saying about EA for a long time!)
• Effectiveness comes about through enabling others to reach their potential
• Encourage roving leadership
• Leadership is the “Interception of entropy”

I highly recommend this book. It was so good that I read it twice before returning it to my friend, thanks Karin!

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...

I received a tweet today from @victoravila about the bicentenial celebration of my #1 inspirational leader Abraham Lincoln. Here is the link: http://gov.ca.gov/proclamation/11459

Who is your main leadership inspiration? I would be really glad to know. I have been working on a leadership post for some time now.

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!

I completed two training programs in December.  One program I wrote about in this post was the Enterprise Architecture Fundamentals from Carnegie Mellon Institute for Software Research International.  Good course run by Dr Scott Bernard who walked the group of students through his EA3 Cube Methodology from his book.  This was an online course with students from around the world.  I especially enjoyed the conference calls and the weekly discussion topics as forums to interact with my fellow students.  Here is the link to the work we did as students populating the EA3 Repository for a fictitious aerospace company.  I plan on registering for the Advanced Enterprise Architecture course which runs from Jan to Mar 2009.  Once I complete that course, Carnegie Mellon will issue me a Certified Enterprise Architect designation.

The second was a series of courses from the Sauder School of Business, Executive Education program at the University of British Columbia resulting in a Certificate in Management Excellence. These courses addressed a serious gap in my resume in the realm of management skills.  The courses were face to face and required high interaction with the instructor and the other students.  I now have a set of skills and reference materials that will serve me well in the future.  Here is the list of courses I took:  Read more...