For years I have seen organisations struggle to achieve Business Interoperability and waste resources time and time again arguing semantics. In my opinion the root source of this struggle is not having a common language.
6 Essential Questions to ask when Designing Products and Services
How to identify which customer needs, if serviced, will provide value to your customer AND to your business
Organisations striving to be customer centric, at some point in time, will be faced with the task of identifying customer needs that must be serviced in order for the business to grow and out do their competitors. If you have a long customer needs ‘wish list’, the biggest challenge is justifying which feature is worth implementing and will provide the highest value to your customer and your business.
Optimising Business Capabilities and Performance
Later this month, The Open Group’s first conference in Australia will focus on “How Does Enterprise Architecture Transform an Enterprise?”
As a prelude to the event, Briefings Direct recently interviewed CEO Hugh Evans and Craig Martin, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Architect at Enterprise Architects. The interview was conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.Listen to the podcast here:
Why Spend Money on EA When Budgets are Tight?
I’m often asked, by both business and technology stakeholders, why they should spend money on enterprise architecture when their budgets are already too tight. A common reaction to budget cuts is to drop strategic work in favour of diverting funds to operational activities. Many fail to recognise that this is the time when a clear enterprise view of the organisation is vitally important. Although a large architecture program may not be appropriate, you may have to invest some money to avoid wasting significant money on poor decisions.
Why Some Architecture Functions Don’t… (function)
Building an architecture capability is easy, right? We’ve all had the same thought – just send your cleverest current or aspiring architects on a week’s architecture training (pick your favourite flavour – TOGAF, Archimate, etc), spend a few bucks on a shiny new whiz-bang architecture tool then whip up a few eye catching models and send them out into the world. There you have it, an instant business-aligned IT architecture from a team who can now architect the heck out of anything you care to throw at them.
If only it was that simple…
Gaining Greater Cohesion: Bringing Business Analysis and Business Architecture into Focus
Having delivered many talks on Business Architecture over the years, I’m often struck by the common vision driving many members in the audience – a vision of building cohesion in a business, achieving the right balance between competing forces and bringing the business strategy and operations into harmony. However, as with many ambitious visions, the challenge in this case is immense. As I will explain, many of the people who envision this future state of nirvana are, in practice, inadvertently preventing it from happening.
ArchiMate® in the Field
How is ArchiMate® 2 being used by practising architects today?
The ArchiMate® 2 specification was released by The Open Group in December 2011. Based on conversations with customers during our TOGAF® 9.1 training and consulting engagements, we are seeing increasing interest in – and adoption – of ArchiMate® 2 among practising architects.
How is ArchiMate® 2 being used? What kind of models and diagrams are being created – given that ArchiMate® supports the integration of architecture views across all domains of enterprise architecture (Business, Data, Application, Technology)?
INFOGRAPHIC: The EA Headspace
The world of business is enormously complex and diverse and the boundaries of enterprise are constantly changing, as are the rules of the game. So – what matters to an architect? The EA Headspace infographic is a fun way to communicate what’s on the mind of our team here at Enterprise Architects.
A License to Work
Look in various business and technology architecture forums on LinkedIn and you will see hundreds of attempts to define enterprise architecture. The debate rages about whether business architecture is part of EA, what it takes to be an architect, and whether architects can even rightly use a title that is hard-earned by the ‘real’ architects in the construction industry.
TOGAF® to be the Prerequisite Certification for Architects
At EA we interview a lot of Architects in the course of placing talent and building teams for our enterprise clients. In fact according to our records that’s something approaching 8000 over the last ten years. Doing the math – this means around 15 per week – and that excludes the CVs received from those that we are unable to meet. That gives us a fair perspective on trending data on both the demands of clients and the capabilities and qualifications of applicants.