The Value of EA Can Be Elusive In our seminars, the most common question is how to demonstrate the value of architecture. When we ask ‘value to whom?’, we often …
Process Architectures & Organization Charts
In my working life I spend a lot of time with client organizations discovering and capturing useful models of their process architectures. In every country, industry sector, organization type and …
New Perspectives on Architecture Reviews
Since the emergence of software architecture as a discipline in the early 1990s, much attention has been given to its use in evaluating competing solution options. The IEEE recommended practice …
Why And How Is EA Relevant To The Top Team?
It’s a recurrent theme – how can EA leaders engage with the top team – particularly business executives. This article includes supportive findings from the McKinsey & Henley Business School …
Enterprise Architecture: Exploring a Chemistry Metaphor
Many times, I am asked, “what is the difference between the Zachman Framework and other Frameworks, notably TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework)? There is a profound difference and Alan …
Robotic Process Automation
What do we mean with Robotic Process Automation. Is this just the execution of a regular business process by a robot instead of a human workforce? And therefore RPA does …
What Shapes My Thinking: Digital Operating Model & Technology Strategy
As a CTO & Chief Architect, what shapes my thinking on operating model design & technology strategy for the modern digital world? I shared some of my insights when I …
Anyone Can Have an Architectural Idea
Anyone, anywhere, and at anytime, can have an idea that could impact your enterprise’s architecture. They might be an enterprise architect, but are most probably not. Depending on the value …
Patterns of Strategy
Enterprise Architecture has always had a slightly unbalanced relationship with strategy. Often the line taken by EA is that its job is to follow strategy, to design, redesign or reconfigure …
Developing your Process Architecture: It’s all About Your Work
Introduction In the first article of this series, I discussed the current interest in Business Architecture that has been brewing in the last little while and also discussed some of …
The Mythic Business Analyst: The Next Evolution of the BA Role
I have been interested in myths and legends for as long as I can remember, thrilling to the adventures of the heroes and heroines that battled the forces of darkness, …
Paper on the Case of Customer Recruitment Processes: Dynamic Evolution of CRM Resource
This study is borne from a concern that organisations continue to invest significantly in CRM systems that are redundant by the time they are launched. This is because these systems …
Reinventing IT: How Strategic Enterprise Design Leads Digital Transformation
Enterprise IT is broken. Ask any person in “the business” – and to IT that means anyone else – what they think about IT, and you get a blank stare …
The Buried Treasure of Enterprise Architecture
Enterprises make architectural investments, whether or not they have an architecture team. Yet, executives can often find it hard to put a value on those investments, or even know which …
Architecting Change as a Core Competency
In a recent article for Forbes I wrote that enterprise architects (EAs) should be less agents of change as architects of change. In response, several EAs commented that what they …
Architecture Is Architecture Is Architecture
In 1980, we were having difficulty transforming the Enterprise Strategy into implemented systems, the instantiated Enterprise, because the strategies tended to be articulated in a somewhat abstract form like “Make …
Synthesizing your Architecture’s Strategic Guidance
Introduction In the first article of this series, I discussed the current interest in Business Architecture that has been brewing in the last little while and also discussed some of …
Application Portfolio Rationalization
It is interesting how certain topics just never seem to grow old and remain interesting – like speaking about the weather. Topics like these even exist in architecture. Application Rationalization …
The Five Traits of a Successful Digital Leader
Innovation is a dirty word… which is why we started to call it disruption. Today, disruption stands for the new digital adversaries that are aggressively entering your market space at …
Twenty years on, and stakeholders still don’t speak architect…
Twenty years ago, the US Congress signed an Act known as The Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA). The Act made it a legal requirement for US Federal agencies to appoint a CIO …