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Enterprise Architecture

Thoughts on developing a strategic plan for implementing EA programs, how to provide your teams with the technical skills needed to implement a service-oriented architecture, understanding what’s involved in creating a business architecture, and more.

Identity Management in Technology-Assisted Educational Systems

 John Tibbetts | Jul 17, 2012  1 Response
Jul 172012
 
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On that long list of venerable institutions primed for a high-tech overhaul, higher education is near the top. Its shortcomings are much discussed: universities are expensive, inaccessible, inflexible, and out of touch with the needs of students and the world economy. A diploma that demands four (or more) years on campus, long lectures, fend-for-yourself homework, and massive final exams seems as much a relic of the 19th century as of the 20th. Educating the millions of people that our future depends on will require not just a productivity boost but something fundamentally different. These days “something fundamentally different” usually involves the Internet. Decades of desultory experiments with “computer-aided education” have now yielded exciting, scalable, measurably …

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 Business Technology Trends, Enterprise Architecture, General, Risk Management

On the Critical Path for Change: Architect Agile Products and Processes

 Roger Evernden | May 21, 2012  1 Response
May 212012
 
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Products and processes are two of the most vital components of a successful business. Useful, relevant, or innovative products are important for attracting and keeping customers. Efficient and effective processes are crucial to making the customer experience enjoyable and worthwhile. Product and process should therefore be included as key components in any business architecture. But, too often, product and process are not given the architectural priority they deserve. While physical products such as cars or planes are highly engineered, enterprise architects tend to overlook the architecture of information-based products and view them instead as the domain of business managers. (Note that physical products, such as the engineering of cars or computers, are more likely to …

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 Agile Project Management, Enterprise Architecture, General

Enterprise Architecture Governance

 Jim Watson | Mar 13, 2012  4 Responses
Mar 132012
 
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Governance is a fundamental (perhaps the fundamental) process within EA to connect the business aspirations with the current and future enterprise reality. Governance is probably also the most contentious EA process: a necessary evil at best or a dysfunctional rubber stamp or change-prevention mechanism at worst. The current focus on enterprise agility provides a context for refining governance. The conclusion is not to throw out governance or to diminish EA to a laissez-faire view of awareness and simplistic control of the enterprise. Rather, the conclusion is that governance can be made effective, compelling, and a value-add to agility. Part of the complexity with governance is that it varies widely and is a tradeoff of constraints …

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 Enterprise Architecture, General, Governance

EA New Year’s Resolutions, Seventh Edition

 Mike Rosen | Jan 6, 2012  1 Response
Jan 062012
 
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Welcome to the seventh-anniversary edition of my enterprise architect’s New Year’s resolutions. I hope it will give you food for thought and some inspiration for architectural growth in 2012. Understand business analytics. The past few years have seen dramatic increases in the capabilities of business intelligence systems, accompanied by decreases in costs, to the point where most organizations can easily afford to take advantage of business analytics. The problem is that the information that these systems need to analyze is not readily available. While this is not a trivial problem to solve, it does present a major opportunity for enterprise architecture. When we provide management or decision makers with information that they don’t currently have …

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 Enterprise Architecture, General  Tagged with: , , , ,

Business Architecture Becomes Mainstream

 Mike Rosen | Dec 20, 2011  No Responses
Dec 202011
 
Business Architecture Becomes Mainstream

Over the past few years, the field of Business Architecture (BA) has been evolving rapidly. It used to be the exception that an EA program had business architects, but now it is the rule. A consensus is emerging about what BA is, what it produces, who practices it, and how. Professional organizations such as the Business Architecture Guild are creating communities of architects and developing best practices. Now, BA is delivering results that are impacting the business and getting attention for doing so. And finally, the critical mass of successful results, best practices, skilled professionals, resources, tools, has reached the point where Business Architecture is a mainstream capability within most advanced organizations. What is the …

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 Business Technology Trends, Enterprise Architecture  Tagged with: ,

Hype Drives the Cloud into the Trough of Disillusionment

 Mike Rosen | Dec 17, 2011  No Responses
Dec 172011
 
Hype Drives the Cloud into the Trough of Disillusionment

Sometimes my favorite thing about the cloud is that it is garnishing all of the media hype these days, in place of SOA. Finally, I can stop trying to meet overblown expectations about when SOA will deliver benefits, and get down to the business of implementing valuable SOA solutions. Don’t worry, the cloud will get to this point too, but it has a few years of growing pains to go through. This year, it will pass through the inevitable “Trough of Disillusionment” part of its lifecycle. Now don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty to like about the cloud, and over time it will become a standard part of enterprise platforms, but for now it has …

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 Business Technology Trends, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture  Tagged with: , ,

William Ulrich Added to Summit Agenda

 Anne Mullaney | Dec 14, 2011  No Responses
Dec 142011
 
William Ulrich Added to Summit Agenda

This past summer, William Ulrich led a Q&A for Cutter clients on Business Capability Mapping. It was so popular he did it twice! So what’s next? He’s going to build on the topic at Summit 2012: Executive Education+, April 2-4.  In the interactive work session, you’ll get to try your hand at identifying capabilities, completing a value stream and designing actionable solutions through the lens of business architecture. Practicing these skills with Bill’s guidance at the Summit will clarify why and how your organization can leverage business architecture to streamline mergers, shift to customer centric business models, deploy horizontal business solutions and pursue a growing range of transformational opportunities.

 Conferences+Events, Enterprise Architecture  Tagged with: , , ,

A Focus on Environment — not Enterprise — as the Context for Architecture

 Roger Evernden | Dec 12, 2011  No Responses
Dec 122011
 
A Focus on Environment — not Enterprise — as the Context for Architecture

I have three related predictions for Enterprise Architects in 2012. Actually they are more like ongoing trends, but they are the ones that I think will be most relevant when making architectural decisions next year. All three could be summarized as a need to focus on environment as context, rather than enterprise. Enterprise Architecture puts IT systems in the context of how IT supports business and management needs, and it places business processes and products in the context of the organizational structure, its strategies and capabilities. But enterprises don’t operate in isolation, and increasingly their architectures need to be defined in the context of the broader environment. I see three reasons for organizations to start …

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 Business Technology Trends, Enterprise Architecture  Tagged with: , ,

Value Stream’s Role in Project Planning

 William Ulrich | Sep 6, 2011  2 Responses
Sep 062011
 
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A value stream depicts how “a business delivers end-to-end stakeholder value.” Because a value stream envisions value delivery across business units, product lines, and even organizational boundaries, value streams provide a way for all stakeholders to perform situation analysis, craft a common strategy, and implement that strategy based on a consensus-based solution. This is an essential planning concept when multiple, fragmented processes slow or hinder the delivery of stakeholder value. Consider, for example, a customer of one set of products or services requesting information about, or help with, a different set of products or services. It is not uncommon to find no recognition that an individual or organization is already a valued customer. Parallel, fragmented …

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 Business-IT Strategies, Enterprise Architecture, General  Tagged with: ,

Business Architecture in Practice: Lessons from the Trenches

 Christine Generali | Aug 25, 2011  No Responses
Aug 252011
 
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In the past year, business architecture crossed a major threshold in terms of industry awareness and acceptance. Business architecture is now viewed as an important business discipline that executives should pursue and is being used to enable a variety of business solutions that range from ongoing operational improvements to major transformation scenarios. What about you? Do you have a business architecture story to share? The November 2011 Cutter IT Journal, with Guest Editor William Ulrich, will examine business architecture experiences from the trenches. Proposals of interest are due 9 September 2011. To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers03.html

 Business-IT Strategies, Enterprise Architecture, General, IT Management  Tagged with: , ,
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