This morning, David Linthicum, Bill Russell and I traded our top 3 Cloud Computing Picks for August. Despite the slow news month, we had a lot to discuss. Even with me “stealing” one of Dave’s stories. Check out the podcast.
My friends at ShareDynamics, Joe and Gail Raynus, are conducting a full-day workshop on Goal-Driven Business Measurements, on September 23 in Cambridge MA.
“This collaborative workshop will examine the concepts of Management Scorecards, Innovation Curve and Measurement Framework and introduce a clear, concise methodology that will help better understand, monitor and measure critical processes, analyze challenges and proactively take action.”
Learning Objectives:
- Gain understanding of key components of Quantitative Business Performance Measurement
- Introduce Logic Model for business strategy planning
- Learn Goal-Question-Metric Methodology to define effective Key Process Indicators and Metrics
- Develop understanding of management dashboards and their structure
- Learn how to develop a top-down measurement scorecard/dashboard structure for monitoring and control of your key processes and indicators
- Establish a measurement program that is aligned with the organization’s business processes
- Enhance ability to analyze quantitative information for decision making and analysis
The workshop is based on material from Joe’s forthcoming book, Improving Business Process Performance. If, like me, you are a firm believer in the criticality of business visibility and responsiveness, you should check out this seminar.
Yesterday afternoon, I fired off a series of "You aren’t really an enterprise architect if…" tweets. The tweets were inspired by real-life encounters. However, I won’t be revealing my muses. That would be rude.
So, without further ado, my "You aren’t really an enterprise architect if…" tweet mini-rant follows:
you’re not really an enterprise architect if… change scares you #entarch #posers
you’re not really an enterprise architect if… you can’t envision and speak at conceptual level #entarch #posers
you’re not really an enterprise architect if… you get wigged out by ambiguity (dragons) #entarch #posers
you’re not really an enterprise architect if… you can only speak to one business or technical domain #entarch #posers
you’re not really an enterprise architect if… your stuff never gets off the whiteboard or out of the slide deck #entarch #posers
The fear change, conceptual level, and ambiguity ones garnered good retweet buzz from the enterprise architect community. Additionally, a few real enterprise architects chimed in with their own observations.
Sally Bean offered the following:
You’re not really an enterprise architect if the whiteboard is still blank at the end of the meeting #entarch #posers
EricStephens added a corollary:
[Each so true. I can't think without a marker in my hand. My three whiteboards here are always full.]
Bob McIlree added two related to presentations:
You’re not really an enterprise architect if [business people] are checking Blackberrys, watches, or sleeping 5 min. into presentation. #entarch #posers
You’re not really an enterprise architect if IT/developers have you deep in the weeds 5 min. into your presentation #entarch #posers
How about you? Have you observed any enterprise architect poser characteristics you’d like to share? Please leave the muses out of it, they have enough challenges already. 
Ah, together at last. The elemental links blog and business site are now combined at elementallinks.com. Over the weekend, I completed the move of the business and blog content to a new Wordpress site, hosted by Laughing Squid on the Rackspace Cloud.
Technically, the blog move was a copy. Although I brought the archives over, I’m keeping the original typepad site for link integrity. Links to the typepad path (elementallinks.typepad.com) and the mapped path (blog.elementallinks.net) will still work. At least until the credit card on that account expires
Subscribers, email and feed, will continue to receive elemental links posts without interruption. I’ve remapped the Feedburner feed to the new site.
On the new site, you’ll find information about my business services, research focus, background, policies, and (of course) my new, shiny, blog.
Stop by. Comment. Connect.
On his excellent blog, Nick Malik asks if we need a canonical definition of enterprise architecture? Nick opens with a definition from the EARF, continues with the compromise definition from the 160-character LinkedIn discussion, shares his own and asks for input.
Certainly, a canonical definition of enterprise architecture would be valuable. But, what exactly should it convey? And how would it vary from traditional definitions? What follows is the comment I submitted.
Hi Nick,
So, I participated in that LinkedIn thread as well. I shared a prior tweet of mine, “The ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture is change-friendly capability delivery”.
Interestingly, most replies in that thread interpreted “purpose” as describing the function, rather than the outcome. I find this problematic.
I think the number one question Enterprise Architects and Enterprise Architecture Practices need to answer is “What do we contribute to the business”. What is the ultimate outcome of Enterprise Architecture? And therefore, what would be missing (or more difficult) without Enterprise Architecture.
For me, it’s getting to “change-friendly”. If I’m reading correctly, your definition and the EARF contain a similar theme. So, it seems purpose-wise, we coalesce on enabling change.
Additionally, I agree with the EARF purpose of reducing complexity, and as Aleks Buterman often calls out, EA plays a large role in technology investment management.
So, I propose we think of EA as a business and work backwards from the desired outcomes — ease of change, reduction of complexity, and better technology investment return.
To achieve those outcomes, what capabilities, policies, people and tools are required. And then, how would we describe (classify) that?
Would it be a rev of Enterprise Architecture? Something else? I know it’s not the Linkedin Group output.
Your comrade in the EA revolution,
Brenda
So, assuming my approach on thinking of EA as a business is a good starting point, what do you believe is the ultimate outcome of enterprise architecture? Is it ease of change, reduction of complexity, and better technology investment return? More? Less? Different?
And, (bonus question) if your enterprise architecture practice didn’t exist, what (if anything) would be more difficult?
At some point this week, I read a post by Warren Berger, author of Glimmer, on The Four Phases of Design Thinking. I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to (good) enterprise architect thinking, especially phase 1, Question:
“If you spend any time around designers, you quickly discover this about them: They ask, and raise, a lot of questions. Often this is the starting point in the design process, and it can have a profound influence on everything that follows. Many of the designers I studied, from Bruce Mau to Richard Saul Wurman to Paula Scher, talked about the importance of asking "stupid questions"–the ones that challenge the existing realities and assumptions in a given industry or sector. The persistent tendency of designers to do this is captured in the joke designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?”
While I chuckled at the light bulb joke, it was the next section that really caught my attention. Back in my corporate chief architect days, I used to say to my team and peers in the leadership group that it was my job to ask questions. Here’s why:
“In a business setting, asking basic "why" questions can make the questioner seem naïve while putting others on the defensive (as in, "What do you mean ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ We’ve been doing it this way for 22 years!"). But by encouraging people to step back and reconsider old problems or entrenched practices, the designer can begin to re-frame the challenge at hand — which can then steer thinking in new directions. For business in today’s volatile marketplace, the ability to question and rethink basic fundamentals — What business are we really in? What do today’s consumers actually need or expect from us? — has never been more important.””
Another synergy with the enterprise architect role is “Connect”:
“Designers, I discovered, have a knack for synthesizing–for taking existing elements or ideas and mashing them together in fresh new ways. This can be a valuable shortcut to innovation because it means you don’t necessarily have to invent from scratch. By coming up with "smart recombinations" (to use a term coined by the designer John Thackara), Apple has produced some of its most successful hybrid products; and Nike smartly combining a running shoe with an iPod to produce its groundbreaking Nike Plus line (which enables users to program their runs). It isn’t easy to come up with these great combos. Designers know that you must "think laterally" — searching far and wide for ideas and influences — and must also be willing to try connecting ideas that might not seem to go together. This is a way of thinking that can also be embraced by non-designers.”
So, my enterprise architect friends, I ask you this: Are you asking enough of the right questions to discover (and deliver) “smart recombinations”?
Read the full post.
