Last session of the day, a thought leader panel on Enterprise Architecture Frameworks. This session will be recorded for podcast on Dana’s briefings direct. There’s also some American Idol type pinpad voting device. Smartly, my table mates didn’t assign the pinpad to me.
Moderator: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions and ZDNet Blogger.
Participants:
- Jane Varnus, Architecture Consultant for Enterprise Architecture Department, of Bank of Montreal, Canada
- Henry Peyret, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
- Tony Baer, Senior Analyst, Ovum
- Janine Kemmeren, Enterprise Architect for Getronics Consulting and Chair of the Architecture Forum Strategy Work Group
- Chris Forde, VP Technology Integrator, American Express and Chair of Architecture Forum, The Open Group
On architecture frameworks…
Tony Baer – Q: IT and business communication: IT needs a consistent means (process) to translate the undoable to the doable.
Chris Forde – Q: investing in architecture in downturn: Keep an eye on the ball. The ball is not Enterprise Architecture, it is where your business needs to be. Need to identify business changes and respond.
Audience Polling Question 1: Impact of Economy — A need for higher general productivity from IT promotes the use of an EA framework (like TOGAF). Audience poll response: 77% yes, 23% no.
Audience Polling Question 2: Good, strategic-level IT architecture practices will concretely demonstrate a business value in 12-months. [Me, I find this question ambiguous, depends on what you are trying to do and how you approach it]. Audience poll response: 45% agree, 55% disagree
Jane Varnus Q: Why is certification skyrocketing with respect to frameworks. Proof you understand the framework.
Chris Forde: Certification can raise the bar for the profession.
Tony Baer: Q: Relationship between certification trend & security? The rate by which holes are opening up, impossible to keep pace with. Take lesson from manufacturing, design for quality, design for security. Can’t just throw code over the wall to security professionals. Security needs to be considered throughout software lifecycle, by all participants. Not just a matter of perimeter security.
Audience Polling Question 3: Good, strategic-level IT architecture practices will concretely demonstrate a business value in 24-months. [Still ambiguous for me, see above.] Audience poll response: 88% agree, 12% disagree
Q: SOA, dead or alive. For me, this conversation is dead.
Audience Polling Question 4: SOA dead? 63% SOA is not dead tactically or strategically. Remaining 37% spread over 5 choices: business outcomes hard to define (11%), soa too complex (9%), too expensive / no concrete ROI (5%), existing architectures good enough (5%), benefits better attained via WOA / RESTful / Webby means (6%)
Tony Baer comments on modular aspect of TOGAF 9 and how that makes EA more accessible for organizations. Also calls out business environment changes (price of oil) and need to quickly adapt. What seems like long-term plan/problem, may quickly change. Need to adapt with it.
Janine Kemmeren comments on how IT can’t talk tech with the business. IT needs to learn to talk in business terms, which starts with understanding of the underlying business issues. Don’t start with SOA, Cloud, WOA etc.
Chris Forde, echos Janine’s comments. Can’t talk architecture. Talk business.
Tony as well. Need to show results. Good results that is, not late and over budget.
Interesting Question from Dana: is there a Moore’s law for IT? Price/productivity factors or outer bounds?
Dana: should business understand IT problems? How difficult it is to meet the business needs? General discussion we (IT) don’t give the business the right information. [For me, this is part of business-driven IT… running IT with business discipline and being able to speak with business folks about IT offerings, capabilities, service level contracts, portfolio value, IT dashboard etc. Oh, but I digress…]
Tony is talking about LEAN and the link to Deming in respect to IT product quality. [Me, I see big ‘Muda‘ in many IT organizations, and have recommended the application of LEAN practices to the business of IT. Oops, digressed again]
Henry Peyret mentions using contracts and services in what (to me) falls into the realm of service management.
There was much more discussion than I captured here. If you want to hear it all, keep an eye on Dana’s site for the podcast.
