I’m now seventy years old. Today is the day that I retire from ‘enterprise’-architecture, so that I can concentrate more on enterprise-architecture. And no, that’s not a contradiction. The point here is that there are two different approaches that are both described as ‘enterprise architecture’. The first is EWITA – enterprise-wide IT-architecture. It does have its valid uses, but it should never be described as ‘enterprise-architecture’, for the simple reason that its only real interest is the use of IT in the enterprise, not the enterprise itself. Unfortunately, most of what purports to ..read more

This was to be the first part of the reveal for the “So here’s the plan…” for the next stage of my work – but then illness intervened, didn’t it? Oh well. I’ll be back as soon as I can. But for now let’s just say that the plan builds a bridge between whole-enterprise architectures themes at a literally global scale, such as: …to connect to the whole-enterprise architectures for the small everyday practicalities on how to make those those changes happen: First, though, I’ll need time to recover from this present illness. More later, and see you soon ..read more

When does a fair question about business become unfair? One answer: when the questioner expects to make money from an answer that they won’t pay for… I hate the money-economy with a passion, and I try to help others as much as I can – so this issue around ‘not-so-fair questions’ has been a relentless problem for me throughout the entirety of my time with the mainstream ‘enterprise’-architecture profession. To put it bluntly, far too many people in this trade misuse our generosity towards others – and it’s not a game I’m going to play any more. A few people definitely play dirty on this one, an ..read more

How do architectures fail? One way is that we start architecture too late or finish too early on the realisation-stack – so how do we avoid that trap? My recent webinar ‘How architecture fails, and what to do about it‘ (see slidedeck on Slideshare, and full 90min video via link on this post) explored three common causes of architecture failure: 1: Blurring between distinct rolesof architecture and design 2: Starting architecture too lateand/or finishing too early [this post] 3: Placing arbitrary constraintson content, scope and/or scale As in the previous post, we’ll expl ..read more

How do architectures fail? One way is that we make arbitrary and untested assumptions about constraints – so how do we avoid that trap? My recent webinar ‘How architecture fails, and what to do about it‘ (see slidedeck on Slideshare, and full 90-minute video via link on this post) explored three common causes of architecture failure: 1: Blurring between distinct rolesof architecture and design 2: Starting architecture too lateand/or finishing too early 3: Placing arbitrary constraintson content, scope and/or scale [this post] As in the previous post, we’ll explore this fa ..read more

How do architectures fail? One way is that we start architecture too late or finish too early on the realisation-stack – so how do we avoid that trap? My recent webinar ‘How architecture fails, and what to do about it‘ (see slidedeck on Slideshare, and full 90min video via link on this post) explored three common causes of architecture failure: 1: Blurring between distinct rolesof architecture and design 2: Starting architecture too lateand/or finishing too early [this post] 3: Placing arbitrary constraintson content, scope and/or scale As in the previous post, we’ll expl ..read more

How do architectures fail? One way is that key distinctions between architecture and design can get blurred – so how do we avoid that trap? My recent webinar ‘How architecture fails, and what to do about it‘ (see slidedeck on Slideshare, and full 90min video via link on this post) explored three common causes of architecture failure: Blurring between distinct rolesof architecture and design [this post] 2: Starting architecture too lateand/or finishing too early 3: Placing arbitrary constraintson content, scope and/or scale We’ll explore each of these fails in turn, using a modified (ser ..read more

I’m now seventy years old. Today is the day that I retire from ‘enterprise’-architecture, so that I can concentrate more on enterprise-architecture. And no, that’s not a contradiction. The point here is that there are two different approaches that are both described as ‘enterprise architecture’. The first is EWITA – enterprise-wide IT-architecture. It does have its valid uses, but it should never be described as ‘enterprise-architecture’, for the simple reason that its only real interest is the use of IT in the enterprise, not the enterprise itself. Unfortunately, most of what purports to ..read more

This was to be the first part of the reveal for the “So here’s the plan…” for the next stage of my work – but then illness intervened, didn’t it? Oh well. I’ll be back as soon as I can. But for now let’s just say that the plan builds a bridge between whole-enterprise architectures themes at a literally global scale, such as: …to connect to the whole-enterprise architectures for the small everyday practicalities on how to make those those changes happen:   First, though, I’ll need time to recover from this present illness. More later, and see you soon ..read more

When does a fair question about business become unfair? One answer: when the questioner expects to make money from an answer that they won’t pay for… I hate the money-economy with a passion, and I try to help others as much as I can – so this issue around ‘not-so-fair questions’ has been a relentless problem for me throughout the entirety of my time with the mainstream ‘enterprise’-architecture profession. To put it bluntly, far too many people in this trade misuse our generosity towards others – and it’s not a game I’m going to play any more. A few people definitely play dirty on this one, an ..read more