Enterprise Architecture

How to Assess Your Technical Architecture

September 4, 2010

Guest Post by Russ Trpkovki When a new project begins, I am often overwhelmed with the amount of information and number of decisions requiring my attention. I need to identify gaps in the current state architecture as well as think about future state technical capabilities. My analysis and decision making is usually done at a fast pace under high stress and lots of scrutiny from the program leadership. Given the fluid nature of an early ...

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Who Needs a Current State Technology Architecture?

August 23, 2010

Guest Post by Zach Sachen, Sridhar Karimanal and Rima Safari Collecting information about your current technology architecture is a major pain, so why bother? Is it just a waste of time or is it another enterprise architecture myth? A quick calculation shows that building skills and processes to produce, maintain, and use current state architecture information can save a company a lot of time and money, as well as realize additional benefits along the way. ...

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How To Deliver Enterprise Architecture Value Early

July 13, 2010

Co-authored with David Baker How to demonstrate the value of enterprise architecture is a constant question we get from our clients. In fact, a more basic question might be “what is the business value of EA?” We strongly believe that EA should be the way that a business connects its strategy to its technology investment plan – through the use of business capabilities. As good as that might sound in concept, the hard work is ...

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16 Enterprise Architecture Strategies Learned The Hard Way

June 30, 2010

Co-authored with David Baker We’ve been spending time thinking through the differences in implementing new or improving existing EA capabilities for smaller, say a few billion in revenue and larger firms in the Fortune 100 or thereabouts. Because the larger firms tend to have many complex, often unrelated business units, the role of centralized IT functions can also be quite complex, even unclear. Furthermore, centralized enterprise functions have many challenges in driving standards throughout diverse, ...

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Did BP See All of Its Problems In Time?

June 16, 2010

In their letter to BP’s CEO Tony Hayward, the Committee on Energy and Commerce chairmen outline 5 major issues they believe caused the current disaster. In a nutshell, they are: They chose a cheaper way to line the well pipes despite multiple warnings (design) They installed only 6 of the recommended 21 devices to center the casing in the well because they were pressed for time (design) They skipped a test to see if the ...

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Busting 5 Enterprise Architecture Myths

June 8, 2010

First Group CIO Chris Boult and I are speaking today at the CIO Executive Summit in Cincinnati about enterprise architecture. As its adoption continues to challenge many, Chris and I decided to discuss and bust these 5 myths: EA is what IT uses to plan its technology You can’t measure it Architects only pontificate, they don’t work EA doesn’t work with an SDLC If you subscribe to SOA, you don’t need EA Enterprise Architecture is ...

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CIO Leadership Stories – Learning to Learn

March 22, 2010

My family and I just returned from a week long spring break trip to Colorado. I’m very thankful for the opportunity to take a long break, as it’s great to spend that much time with family and friends, and it is also a good recharge. Also, several hours on ski lifts provide some good thinking time. This is the first of three leadership stories I’ve been reflecting on in the brisk mountain air. I hope ...

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4 Steps to Manage Your Technology Portfolio

May 27, 2009

This post is about managing the life and death of technologies in an enterprise. Not projects or applications, but the portfolio of the underlying technologies – operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, middleware, etc. These must be managed too or you will find yourself in the same situation as a client CIO of a large retailer did a few years ago. The servers than ran the in-store processors – the computers in the back office of ...

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A CIO Can’t Do More with Less

May 12, 2009

Yes, I realize that “doing more with less” is a saying that is used to encapsulate the increased pressure on the enterprise, and the IT function specifically, to keep the business running with less revenue coming in and lower budgets. But, it bugs me because I think the saying propagates the myths that somehow IT can squeeze even more blood out of the stone, in the same environment in which the business is dissatisfied with ...

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