EAMentor

Hello This blog has now been moved thanks - it's been fun! Read Full Story

Part 1 of 5 part article… The primary purpose of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to inform, guide, and constrain the decisions for the enterprise, especially those related to IT investments. The true challenge of enterprise engineering is to maintain the architecture as a primary authoritative resource for enterprise IT planning. This goal is not met via enforced policy, but by the value and utility of the information provided by the EA. In general, the essential reasons for developing an... Read Full Story

Hello from the eve of yet another EA Conference Here I sit in Calgary, pondering some thoughts with respect to the topics at hand at tomorrow's EA Directions " Critical Issues In Enterprise Architecture and Strategic Alignment" two day conference. I have the great honour to present on several EA topics including some in the area of SOA. Last week, at one of my Architecture Boot Camps, the Technology Architect Boot Camp, I had another great experience with a very talented group of individuals... Read Full Story

In putting some efforts towards my fall seminar schedule, I have been focused on my technology architecture workshops and had a thought today worth sharing. As enterprise architects, we attempt to capture business strategy and put some alignment to our IT Strategy, and formulate an IT Current State and IT Target State architecture. The IT plan is the people, process and technology initiatives that we plan for the year, and potentially two or three threes out to move towards IT future State... Read Full Story

Recently, one of the people I have been coaching in the area of Enterprise Architecture asked me a great question - one worth posting here. He said "what is the scope of the Enterprise Architect?" in context to the head of Application Development, the Lead Analyst or the Solution Architect. I responded within the parameters of Enterprise Architecture at a company. EA provides IT governance and stewardship for any future technology planning and roadmap within a company or organization. An... Read Full Story

Someone asked me a philosophical, yet, appropriate question the other day. Why do I still continue to use a very simple framework in my coaching and consulting with Enterprise Architecture? I began using something called BAIT (business, application, information and technology), and turned to something else - BOAIT (business, organization, application, information and technology). I thought for quite a while, and went through what has changed since I started working in the Enterprise... Read Full Story

Lately, I've been working on the Architect Boot Camp info site and trying to lay out some really basic architecture information and some more advanced stuff. It dawned on me that there might be some who don't understand the difference between system requirements and architectural requirements. If this is news to you - stick with me. If not, I won't waste your time - catch you later. Architecture requirements are typically those you collect during the initial scoping and context setting... Read Full Story

Long time, no type. I've been busy - but now have the time that this deserves. I've just spend a near year acting as the Chief Architect at a large Canadian insurance company, and have many thoughts and insights I've love to share. Here is one of the first. Often, an architect, especially the chief architect, is asked to make an architectural decision. Typically, an IT resource is asking him or her to make the decision, but what needs to happen is the requester has legwork to do. Typically, a... Read Full Story

Happy New Year! It's nice to be back again and writing about my favorite topic. This spring I'm speaking at the Enterprise Architectures Conference on Quick Wins in Enterprise Architecture so I thought I'd share a bit of the content. Enterprise Architecture as a new program within a company or an organization is difficult to kick off. Often there are so many things that need to get done, that we are overwhelmed. We might resort to following recommendations or readings we might find in a book... Read Full Story

Does it ever seem that as an Enterprise Architect, we have many dragons to slay? Our organizations confuse the Chief Architect with chief technology problem solver, and it isn't their fault. Often the current technology hot spot of the day is something that lives in the EA realm, and we are the captain of the ship. We've had many metaphors - the Builder, the Architect of a house, the City Planner, or perhaps the Pilot of an airplane or ship (thanks Mr. Zachman!). Here is mine: An organization... Read Full Story