Unicom is planning another Enterprise Architecture Forum in London on March 21st. These generally attract a good audience of senior IT management from blue chip organizations. At the previous Forum in September, we had case studies from finance, oil and higher education. Anyone wishing to present a case study at the next event, please contact me or Unicom.
We are also planning an Organizational Intelligence Forum, possibly on April 25th to coincide with the Performance Management Forum.
Those outside the UK may wish to plan a trip to London to coincide with these events.
These events are part-funded by commercial sponsorship and vendor exhibitions. Please contact me or Unicom for a vendor information pack.
Showing posts with label UnicomEA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UnicomEA. Show all posts
Friday, December 28, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Forthcoming Events
The next public dates for my workshops with Unicom are as follows.
Business Architecture Bootcamp (November 20th-21st)
Organizational Intelligence Workshop (November 22nd)
Architecture-Led Procurement (November 28th)
Please tell them you saw it on my blog when you book. These workshops are also available inhouse.
I am planning some additional workshops for the New Year. I am developing a one-day Foundations of Business workshop, which will serve as a warm-up to the Business Architecture Bootcamp for those with little business background. And I plan to add some further options to the Business Architecture Bootcamp, to provide more choice of material and more flexibility. Please contact me for more details.
And I am discussing some New Year events with Unicom. I am hoping to persuade Unicom to run an event on Organizational Intelligence, possibly in January 2013. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Architecture Forum goes from strength to strength, and I shall be happy to help Unicom plan the next one, probably in March 2013. In particular, I am looking for one or two volunteers from end-user organizations, willing to present an architectural case study for discussion by a panel of experts. If you are interested, please contact me.
Business Architecture Bootcamp (November 20th-21st)
Organizational Intelligence Workshop (November 22nd)
Architecture-Led Procurement (November 28th)
Please tell them you saw it on my blog when you book. These workshops are also available inhouse.
I am planning some additional workshops for the New Year. I am developing a one-day Foundations of Business workshop, which will serve as a warm-up to the Business Architecture Bootcamp for those with little business background. And I plan to add some further options to the Business Architecture Bootcamp, to provide more choice of material and more flexibility. Please contact me for more details.
And I am discussing some New Year events with Unicom. I am hoping to persuade Unicom to run an event on Organizational Intelligence, possibly in January 2013. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Architecture Forum goes from strength to strength, and I shall be happy to help Unicom plan the next one, probably in March 2013. In particular, I am looking for one or two volunteers from end-user organizations, willing to present an architectural case study for discussion by a panel of experts. If you are interested, please contact me.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
EA Forum Report
Friday, September 28, 2012
EA Questions
#entarch
#bizarch
#UnicomEA Some interesting questions arising at the EA Forum yesterday. I'll post the questions first, and then try and assemble a summary of the answers. (Other participants at the Forum are welcome to chip in.)
The panel devoted a lot of time to explaining WHO should lead and perform EA (e.g. not IT, not external consultants) and a lot of time telling people where NOT to start. There was some agreement that you don't start with an EA framework, that frameworks are often designed to solve a particular class of problem, and that you really need to start with a genuine business problem (rather than an IT problem).
There was considerable discussion of Customer-Centric EA, as well as Patient-Centric EA (for healthcare). A number of participants emphasized the difference between Inside-Out EA and Outside-In EA, and pointed out that internally joined-up systems (the focus of some EA frameworks) did not necessarily equate to a joined-up experience for the customer.
There are technical measures of quality, such as consistency and coherence, where tool support may help, but the real measure of quality is in terms of fit-for-purpose. Does this model successfully communicate a given area to the relevant stakeholders, and does it satisfy their concerns?
There may be useful models of motivation and their political implications, but it may be wise to keep these models to oneself.
Are there any commonly recognized EA priorities? For example, anybody
new to EA may not embrace the extent of use of the models we've just
heard about, so what do they need to get rightly first, second, etc. as a
basis for more sophisticated application of EA?
The panel devoted a lot of time to explaining WHO should lead and perform EA (e.g. not IT, not external consultants) and a lot of time telling people where NOT to start. There was some agreement that you don't start with an EA framework, that frameworks are often designed to solve a particular class of problem, and that you really need to start with a genuine business problem (rather than an IT problem).
I feel like "Enterprise Architecture" has an identity crisis at the moment. I'm hearing "Process", "Decisions", "Systems", but enterprises are far more than that. Where does "geography", "people", "infrastructure" and "customer" feature in an EA model?
There was considerable discussion of Customer-Centric EA, as well as Patient-Centric EA (for healthcare). A number of participants emphasized the difference between Inside-Out EA and Outside-In EA, and pointed out that internally joined-up systems (the focus of some EA frameworks) did not necessarily equate to a joined-up experience for the customer.
How do you validate the quality of an Enterprise Architecture model (in ArchiMate or other)?
There are technical measures of quality, such as consistency and coherence, where tool support may help, but the real measure of quality is in terms of fit-for-purpose. Does this model successfully communicate a given area to the relevant stakeholders, and does it satisfy their concerns?
When mapping motivation against the enterprise, what is the EA role in mapping real stakeholder emotions and impact?
There may be useful models of motivation and their political implications, but it may be wise to keep these models to oneself.
Beyond Multiview
#entarch
#bizarch
#UnicomEA
#SSM
#VSM
#VPEC-T
At yesterday's EA Forum, a rich picture of the oil industry was presented by
Mesbah Khan, who then posed a question about the possible use of such a picture, for enterprise architecture and beyond.
The rich picture is a core technique of the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Over the years, there have been many attempts to produce hybrid methodologies combining SSM with more structured systems approaches. One of the earliest such attempts was Multiview, produced by Trevor Wood-Harper and others in the mid 1980s. In Multiview, a version of SSM is used to analyse issues, and these are then aligned with the analysis of tasks using a more conventional IS modelling approach.
Among other things, Mesbah's rich picture model features stakeholders and their concerns (shown as bubbles), and identifies the conflicts between different stakeholder concerns (shown as crossed swords). This is clearly equivalent to Multiview's analysis of issues.
Nowadays, the terms "stakeholder" and "concern" are mandated by ISO 42010, and incorporated into several enterprise architecture frameworks. (However, stakeholder concerns are often presented as a relatively homogeneous and consistent set of goals and objectives, e.g. using the Business Motivation Model or other schemata, and there is often not enough attention given to the conflicts between stakeholder concerns.)
As I see it, each of these conflicts calls for a series of capabilities or activities to govern the conflict - to allocate resources, balance priorities, and contain the risks. (However, these capabilities and activities are often absent or marginalized in the structured models produced for IT purposes.) They also have important implications for organizational design and trust.
One way of looking at these management and control capabilities is to use a cybernetic view of the enterprise, such as Stafford Beer's VSM. Mesbah indicated that his rich picture can be mapped onto VSM, but he did not have time to present this mapping at yesterday's forum.
Meanwhile, the trust issues may require a different style of analysis, such as VPEC-T, which helps to highlight those issues that are typically "lost in translation" when we go from a "rich" model to more abstract and homogenized "structured" models. See my note Does Rigour Matter?
The rich picture is a core technique of the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Over the years, there have been many attempts to produce hybrid methodologies combining SSM with more structured systems approaches. One of the earliest such attempts was Multiview, produced by Trevor Wood-Harper and others in the mid 1980s. In Multiview, a version of SSM is used to analyse issues, and these are then aligned with the analysis of tasks using a more conventional IS modelling approach.
Among other things, Mesbah's rich picture model features stakeholders and their concerns (shown as bubbles), and identifies the conflicts between different stakeholder concerns (shown as crossed swords). This is clearly equivalent to Multiview's analysis of issues.
Nowadays, the terms "stakeholder" and "concern" are mandated by ISO 42010, and incorporated into several enterprise architecture frameworks. (However, stakeholder concerns are often presented as a relatively homogeneous and consistent set of goals and objectives, e.g. using the Business Motivation Model or other schemata, and there is often not enough attention given to the conflicts between stakeholder concerns.)
As I see it, each of these conflicts calls for a series of capabilities or activities to govern the conflict - to allocate resources, balance priorities, and contain the risks. (However, these capabilities and activities are often absent or marginalized in the structured models produced for IT purposes.) They also have important implications for organizational design and trust.
One way of looking at these management and control capabilities is to use a cybernetic view of the enterprise, such as Stafford Beer's VSM. Mesbah indicated that his rich picture can be mapped onto VSM, but he did not have time to present this mapping at yesterday's forum.
Meanwhile, the trust issues may require a different style of analysis, such as VPEC-T, which helps to highlight those issues that are typically "lost in translation" when we go from a "rich" model to more abstract and homogenized "structured" models. See my note Does Rigour Matter?
Does Rigour Matter?
#entarch
#bizarch
#UnicomEA
One of the topics discussed at yesterday's EA Forum was the question of architectural rigour. This was stimulated by a rich picture of the oil industry, presented by Mesbah Khan, which I intend to cover in a separate post.
At some points in the discussion, I thought I heard the following familiar set of ideas.
0. Architects can produce models at varying levels of detail and rigour, for different purposes.
1. Rich pictures (e.g. Soft Systems Methodology) are less rigorous than Structured Models (e.g. data models, process models).
2. Executive sponsors are unwilling or unable to engage with rigorous models, and prefer vague impressionistic models.
3. Maximum rigour is required if and only if the models are to be used for designing computer systems.
However, there were some voices (including my own) against some of the ideas. In this post, I want to expand a little on these points.
1. There are different styles of "rich picture". Mesbah's model of the oil industry was based on a clearly articulated set of underlying concepts, presented some critical organizational issues in a structured way, and was therefore rigorous enough in its own terms. Some of these issues would undoubtedy be lost in the "translation" from rich picture to conventional EA models. (Of course, some people might conclude that his model wasn't a genuine "rich picture".)
Meanwhile, the apparent rigour of conventional EA models is often pretty superficial, based on the fact that a lot of the concrete meaning has been emptied out, leaving a set of ambiguously labelled lines and boxes. (Yes, you could implement a computer system based on these models, but it might be a pretty bad system, with poor usability, poor interoperability and unexplained side-effects. What is the value of such rigour?)
2. The idea that executives can't cope with rigour is insulting. A good executive is highly intelligent, capable of abstract thinking as well as attention to detail, and familiar with a broad range of analytical techniques. However, executives also understand that different levels of detail and rigour are appropriate for different situations, and will be impatient with a model that requires more attention than the current situation allows.
Of course, there are some executives who really are as stupid as they pretend to be, but please don't base your communications with executives on the patronizing assumption that none of them are as clever as architects.
Thus for some purposes, a quick sketch using PowerPoint or Visio may be sufficient to address stakeholder concerns, but for other purposes they must be motivated to go through the detail. Rigorously. There are times when Management-By-Powerpoint isn't good enough.
3. The idea that rigour only matters for computer systems is also wrong. A lack of rigour when dividing risks and responsibilities between your organization and your business partners can cost your company more money than your entire IT budget for the next ten years. And a lack of rigour when defining performance bonuses for your middle management can result in perverse incentives - paying people vast sums of money to do unproductive things with expensive side-effects.
In comparison, a lack of rigour in architecting computer systems will probably be sorted out by the developers, or fixed in systems testing, so it might cause a little embarassment and delay. Regrettable and sometimes expensive, but usually not disastrous. Only from an IT-centric perspective would this be regarded as the most significant risk.
See also Convergence: Symbolic, Imaginary or Real?
At some points in the discussion, I thought I heard the following familiar set of ideas.
0. Architects can produce models at varying levels of detail and rigour, for different purposes.
1. Rich pictures (e.g. Soft Systems Methodology) are less rigorous than Structured Models (e.g. data models, process models).
2. Executive sponsors are unwilling or unable to engage with rigorous models, and prefer vague impressionistic models.
3. Maximum rigour is required if and only if the models are to be used for designing computer systems.
However, there were some voices (including my own) against some of the ideas. In this post, I want to expand a little on these points.
1. There are different styles of "rich picture". Mesbah's model of the oil industry was based on a clearly articulated set of underlying concepts, presented some critical organizational issues in a structured way, and was therefore rigorous enough in its own terms. Some of these issues would undoubtedy be lost in the "translation" from rich picture to conventional EA models. (Of course, some people might conclude that his model wasn't a genuine "rich picture".)
Meanwhile, the apparent rigour of conventional EA models is often pretty superficial, based on the fact that a lot of the concrete meaning has been emptied out, leaving a set of ambiguously labelled lines and boxes. (Yes, you could implement a computer system based on these models, but it might be a pretty bad system, with poor usability, poor interoperability and unexplained side-effects. What is the value of such rigour?)
2. The idea that executives can't cope with rigour is insulting. A good executive is highly intelligent, capable of abstract thinking as well as attention to detail, and familiar with a broad range of analytical techniques. However, executives also understand that different levels of detail and rigour are appropriate for different situations, and will be impatient with a model that requires more attention than the current situation allows.
Of course, there are some executives who really are as stupid as they pretend to be, but please don't base your communications with executives on the patronizing assumption that none of them are as clever as architects.
Thus for some purposes, a quick sketch using PowerPoint or Visio may be sufficient to address stakeholder concerns, but for other purposes they must be motivated to go through the detail. Rigorously. There are times when Management-By-Powerpoint isn't good enough.
3. The idea that rigour only matters for computer systems is also wrong. A lack of rigour when dividing risks and responsibilities between your organization and your business partners can cost your company more money than your entire IT budget for the next ten years. And a lack of rigour when defining performance bonuses for your middle management can result in perverse incentives - paying people vast sums of money to do unproductive things with expensive side-effects.
In comparison, a lack of rigour in architecting computer systems will probably be sorted out by the developers, or fixed in systems testing, so it might cause a little embarassment and delay. Regrettable and sometimes expensive, but usually not disastrous. Only from an IT-centric perspective would this be regarded as the most significant risk.
See also Convergence: Symbolic, Imaginary or Real?
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Early Autumn Events 2012
#entarch #bizarch September 2012 kicks off with a free webinar, which provides a taster for my 2-day Business Architecture Bootcamp.
By popular demand, I have slightly restructured the Bootcamp so that it can be taken in two separate one-day installments. However, we expect that most people will continue to take both days together.
And I am particularly looking forward to participating in the Systems Thinking Summit in early October,
By popular demand, I have slightly restructured the Bootcamp so that it can be taken in two separate one-day installments. However, we expect that most people will continue to take both days together.
And I am particularly looking forward to participating in the Systems Thinking Summit in early October,
| Event | Dates | Location | Booking |
| Structural Innovation: The Role of Business Architecture (Webinar) | 5 September | via GoToMeeting | |
| Business Architecture Bootcamp | 18-19 September | Unicom Middlesex | via Unicom |
| Organizational Intelligence Workshop | 20 September | Unicom Middlesex | via Unicom |
| Enterprise Architecture Forum | 27 September | West London (Holland Park) | via Unicom |
| Exploring Intelligence (Systems Thinking Summit) | 8-9 October | Cardiff | via website |
| Building Business Capability with Business Analysis | 18 October | West London (Hammersmith) | via Unicom |
Friday, June 29, 2012
July 2012 Events
| Event | Dates | Location | Booking |
| Business Analysis / Big Data Forum | 5 July 2012 | West London (Hammersmith) | via Unicom |
| Assessing Intelligence | 9 July 2012 | Central London | via SCiO |
| Business Architecture Bootcamp | 18-19 July 2012 | Unicom Middlesex | via Unicom |
Sunday, April 01, 2012
EA Forum Report
#entarch A packed room in Central London Thursday for the EA Forum, and lively discussion through the day. Some of the presentations are now available online.
Martin Owen and Jamie Knowles (Corso) Strategic Planning for IT: Creating a Framework to Embrace Market and Business Driven Change
Harmen van den Berg (BiZZdesign), ArchiMate 2.0: Modeling Enterprise Architecture aligned with TOGAF
David Twaddell (BCS EA SG) The Professionalisation of Enterprise Architecture (slideshare)
Tom Gilb, Real Architecture: Engineering? or Pompous Bull***? (pdf)
Richard Veryard, Architecture-Led Procurement (slideshare)
David Hunt, Case study – Enterprise Architecture at Lloyds Banking Group
Philip W. Veasey, The Architectural Challenges of NHS Reorganization - An Independent View (slideshare)
Martin Owen and Jamie Knowles (Corso) Strategic Planning for IT: Creating a Framework to Embrace Market and Business Driven Change
Harmen van den Berg (BiZZdesign), ArchiMate 2.0: Modeling Enterprise Architecture aligned with TOGAF
David Twaddell (BCS EA SG) The Professionalisation of Enterprise Architecture (slideshare)
Tom Gilb, Real Architecture: Engineering? or Pompous Bull***? (pdf)
Richard Veryard, Architecture-Led Procurement (slideshare)
David Hunt, Case study – Enterprise Architecture at Lloyds Banking Group
Philip W. Veasey, The Architectural Challenges of NHS Reorganization - An Independent View (slideshare)
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Architecture-Led Procurement
#entarch #procurement #acquisition Here are my slides from the EA Forum on Thursday.
I am planning to run some workshops on the subject for Unicom in the UK, with a pilot provisionally scheduled for June 2012. I've very keen to talk to anyone who has practical experience or strong opinions in this area, and I should also be grateful for references to case studies and other material.
I am planning to run some workshops on the subject for Unicom in the UK, with a pilot provisionally scheduled for June 2012. I've very keen to talk to anyone who has practical experience or strong opinions in this area, and I should also be grateful for references to case studies and other material.
Architecture led procurement
View more presentations from Richard Veryard
Friday, March 02, 2012
Enterprise Architecture Events March 2012
| #Event | Date | Location | Booking |
| Patrick Hoverstadt, Enterprise Architecture and Systemic Approaches to Enterprise Modelling | 8 March 2012 | BCS London WC2 | via BCS |
| Enterprise Architecture Forum | 29 March 2012 | Central London | via Unicom |
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Unicom EA Forum
Here is my presentation from the Unicom Enterprise Architecture Forum in London on Thursday September 29th.
And here is Philip Boxer's presentation, which outlines his approach to what I'm calling the Third Agenda.
And here is Philip Boxer's presentation, which outlines his approach to what I'm calling the Third Agenda.
Supporting Social Complexity in Collaborative Enterprises from Boxer Research Ltd
See also Philip's blog Supporting social complexity in collaborative enterprises (12 October 2011)
See also Philip's blog Supporting social complexity in collaborative enterprises (12 October 2011)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
EA Talk on Managing Complexity
#entarch I shall be was one of the speakers at the Unicom EA Forum on February 24th in Central London. This post now edited to remove invitation and include slides.
Following my talk, Professor Bernie Cohen talked about some related work by Philip Boxer and himself. Slides no longer available. https://www.slideshare.net/PhilipBoxer/mgt-complex-ea-feb-2011-healthcare
Outline
As business becomes more complex, enterprises are faced with structural complexities that critically affect business performance. Enterprise architecture provides a way of planning and coordinating both human systems and technical systems (including IT), and thereby overcoming the structural inhibitors to business performance. I shall talk about some emerging practical methods for business architecture, and show how these can be used in tandem with the standard popular approaches to manage the true complexity of the business.Slides
Following my talk, Professor Bernie Cohen talked about some related work by Philip Boxer and himself. Slides no longer available. https://www.slideshare.net/PhilipBoxer/mgt-complex-ea-feb-2011-healthcare
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