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...
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
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!
Anthony Salcito – VP Worldwide Education – Microsoft and Higher Education
- New Economy – Same Priorities
- Save Money
- Need to Deliver now
- Embrace Cloud
- Education Analytics
- Making Change Possible
- People, Process and Environment
- Technology is not the issue
- Process is under served
- Think about Holistic Innovation (interesting model with the educator and student at the centre)
- Infrastructure and Access
- Tools and Services
- Data Driven Accountability and Transparency
- Content
- 21st Century Educator and Student Development
- Emerging Technology Priorities
- Unified Communications
- Academic Search
- Education Analytics
- Virtualization
- Cloud Services – an enabler and cost container
- Social Computing
- Mobility
- Software + Services – it needs to be both (combine desktop, online, servers, and devices as building blocks)
Live@edu – the real role here is identity provisioning not just email
Microsoft DreamSpark – https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx
DreamSpark is simple; it’s all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and designer tools
at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology – or just
get a head start on your career.
Microsoft BizSpark – http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/ Read more...
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...