I usually don’t post recaps of events in their tweets but since I was unable to do full coverage of the event I have picked out what I thought to be the most influential tweets. Lots of good nuggets from the Gartner analysts along with commentary from myself and other EA’s at the event.

 

Day One

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Good advice from Betsey Burton: Time box your EA activities. Ex. Allstate Chief Arch 16 wks. To keep atten. of the biz #entarch #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Betsy Burton: business capability should be named <verb> <noun>. Do you agree? Not sure I do, mixing concerns. #entarch #bizarch #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Great overview on Business Capabilities by Betsy Burton. Here's a useful BCM I use. #entarch #bizarch #gartnerea http://mikejwalker.typepad.com/.a/6a011279700eb728a4016306b433f8970d-pi …

· Pete G. ‏(@pgrivas) - Beyond a level 0/1 diagram, #ArchiMate seems to me like a great tool to continue on with Business Capability Modeling. Thoughts? #GartnerEA

· Olivier Laquinte ‏(@OLaquinte) - A process model describes how the business operates, while a business capability model describes what the business does #gartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Connecting Strategy to Execution Enablers. More than business capabilities. #entarch #bizarch #gartnerea http://mikejwalker.typepad.com/.a/6a011279700eb728a4017c31f84119970b-pi …

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Business capabilities modeling bridges the gap between business strategy and IT execution. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Extending #GartnerEA thinking: Connecting Strategy to Execution is more than business capabilities. #entarch #bizarch http://mikejwalker.typepad.com/.a/6a011279700eb728a4017c33f8323e970b-pi …

· Voytek Janisz ‏(@VoytekTheEA) -Business Capability modeling is a great way to bridge communication gap between business and IT #GartnerEA #entarch

· Homero Padilla Cano ‏(@zerkhufu) - “nobody cares about your work, they care about your impact in creating/pushing business outcomes” @ #GartnerEA

· Olivier Laquinte ‏(@OLaquinte) - @brian_burke - since #EA are influencers, should they be on projects steering committees to ensure alignment? #gartnerEA

· Olivier Laquinte ‏(@OLaquinte) - Effectiveness + Efficiency = #EA Impact #gartnerEA

· Olivier Laquinte ‏(@OLaquinte) - Measuring #EA : actions as a result of influence is an impact #gartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Change is a team sport. #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Brian Burke told me no one cares about me, they only care about what I've done for them lately. #GartnerEA #welcometothebusiness

· Duncan Mundell ‏(@dcmundell) - It's the EA's responsibility to negotiate non-functional requirements by helping the business balance cost, risk and capabilities #GartnerEA

· Voytek Janisz ‏(@VoytekTheEA) - Use "Mickey Mouse" diagrams when communicating architecture to business. Leave UML, BPMN, ArchiMate behind. #entarch #GartnerEA

· Voytek Janisz ‏(@VoytekTheEA) - Panel discussion: "Architecture is about managing change and about communication" #entarch #GartnerEA

· Rebecca Newland ‏(@NewlandRebecca) - Five Things I Learned At The #Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit #GartnerEA http://buff.ly/17YtlAn

· Derek E. Weeks ‏(@weekstweets) - Gartner's @MarkRaskino "watch out for new roles of ChiefDataOfficer and ChiefDigitalOfficer at your corp this year". #gartnerea #opentext

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - The new CIO... Chief Innovation Officer. But the role is about much more than technology. #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Entrepreneurial is not a word that sits well with most CIOs. #GartnerEA

· Derek E. Weeks ‏(@weekstweets) -Who is managing your unstructured information? #gartnerea #opentext pic.twitter.com/tqKAvhuEnd

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) -The way to succeed in social media: purpose, purpose, purpose. #GartnerEA #socialmedia

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - 90% of organizations social collaboration efforts fail. #GartnerEA

· Steve Armstrong (‏@sakarmstrong) - Enterprise architecture is something we do, not something we deliver. #gartnerea

· Homero Padilla Cano ‏(@zerkhufu) - “sharing information leads to business innovation and new ways to use information” @ #GartnerEA

· David Middleton (‏@_dmiddleton) - Social collaboration isn't disruptive b/c of the technology but b/c of how it is leveraged and utilized to affect change. #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Great talk on CEO concerns, but I keep thinking, "Bring me the holy hand grenade. #GartnerEA #projectingmontypython

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - The gap between the business and IT is one of understanding and ultimately a language gap between people. #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - You should never trust a survey people, really. #GartnerEA #CEOconcerns

· Derek E. Weeks ‏(@weekstweets) - @MarkRaskino Recession is still problem but tech is not slowing...expect more tech demand as growth strategies unfold #gartnerea #opentext

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Build systems to empower people. #GartnerEA #socialmedia

· Pete G. ‏(@pgrivas) - @mikejwalker From your tweets we must be at the same session at #GartnerEA. I love your site BTW - great information.

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - #GartnerEA is echoing my thoughts of #BizArch It's NOT creating strategy but rationalizing into execution #entarch http://architectureandgovernance.com/content/walker-talks-business-architecture-and-best-practices-using-it …

· David Middleton (‏@_dmiddleton) - By 2020, alternatives to formal higher education will make education more engaging, broadly accessible and broadly recognized. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Betsy Burton: No.1 #bizarch mistake is to separate it from #EntArch They are one in the same. <-Agreed! #GartnerEA

· Michael McNamara ‏(@mfMcNamara) - Develop a crisis management playbook #GartnerEA

· Pete G. ‏(@pgrivas) - Worst practice in #EnterpriseArchitecture is starting out with current state #GartnerEA

· Pete G. ‏(@pgrivas) - #EnterpriseArchitecture is going to be a discipline of Strategic Planning by 2020 - #GartnerEA

· Homero Padilla Cano ‏(@zerkhufu) - increase sales is not strategy #GartnerEA

· Matt Edwards ‏(@mwedward) - "Only 10% of enterprises successfully execute their strategies - Michael Hammer." #gartnerea

· Matt Edwards ‏(@mwedward) - The key to successful business architecture is family counseling. Get past the tears and differences, and work together. #gartnerea

· Ryan Pehrson ‏(@rpehrson) - #GartnerEA Betsy Burton. "60% of EA is 'Family Counseling'"

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Want to add value as an EA? 1. deliver real outcomes, 2. deliver signature ready recommendations. #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - There are no IT projects. There are only business projects. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - #GartnerEA External disruptions effect EA. <- Agreed posted in '09: EA is Different Based On Where You Live #entarch http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2009/05/is-architecture-different-based-on-where-you-live.html …

· Voytek Janisz ‏(@VoytekTheEA) - When strategy is not articulated, it is the business outcomes that can help frame it up. #entarch #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Even if your strategy isn't explicitly documented you can derive it from what you are currently doing. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - #GartnerEA Keynote: Let industry frameworks guide not prescribe <-Agree #entarch

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - #GartnerEA Keynote: Frameworks are bad, let us introduce a new framework and method #entarch

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Categorize EA business driven outcomes as: run, grow or transform. #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - EA goes agile and pragmatic according to Brian Burke. #GartnerEA

· Matt Edwards ‏(@mwedward) - Business objectives should be timeboxed (as should everything)... #gartnerea

· Voytek Janisz ‏(@VoytekTheEA) - Business outcome driven EA is the next wave after the framework-driven EA #GartnerEA #entarch

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - EA is entering third phase. First was framework, followed by process and moving towards business outcome driven EA. #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - By 2015 40% of global 1000 companies will use gamification as a strategy. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - BYOD will double the amount of malware in the enterprise through 2014 #GartnerEA #entarch

· Duncan Mundell ‏(@dcmundell) - Successful #enterprisearchitecture is all about outcomes and not just processes and standards alone. #gartnerea

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - By 2015 #bigdata demand will reach 1 million jobs but only 1/3 will be filled #GartnerEA #entarch

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - By 2015 big data will reach 1 million jobs in global 1000 but only 1/3 will be filled. #GartnerEA

· Matt Durham ‏(@matthewdurham) - Enterprise architects influence $1.1 trillion in enterprise IT spend according to #Gartner #GartnerEA. My influence is somewhat smaller.

 

Day Two

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - BYOD = Bring Your Own Data #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Prediction: we will use 4 - 6 devices and share data via the cloud. #GartnerEA #hopenot

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - BYO-let-my-company-and-I-decide-what-is-best-for-both-of-us #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - 13% NEVER use company supplied devices for personal communications. Is that on or off the record? #GartnerEA #neverisaverystrongword

· Brian Damiani ‏(@bwdamiani) - Interesting: The majority of speakers are British. All very good but an indicator that the US is still lagging in EA adoption? #GartnerEA

· Vijay Nuthulapaty ‏(@VNatGartnerEA) - @markmcgregor Coming to #GartnerEA made me realize that my team is not alone in challenges with EA. Definitely therapeutic.

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Found my new favorite phrase in the disruption session: behavioral economics. Can I now have a behavioral recession? #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - #5 disruption: brain science and neurobusiness. #GartnerEA

· Vijay Nuthulapaty ‏(@VNatGartnerEA) - @mikejwalker Amen brother. And not just detailed designs, issue resolution as well. #gartnerea

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Scott Bittler - “Just because you can do something [detail design] as an EA doesn’t mean you should” #GartnerEA #EntArch

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - #3 disruption to business: robotics and human augmentation. #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - #2 disruption to business: human system interaction. #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - #1 disruption to business: the internet of things. #GartnerEA

· Vijay Nuthulapaty ‏(@VNatGartnerEA) - Met a lot of interesting architects at #gartnerea . By my guesstimate only 50% are in an EA role currently.

· Voytek Janisz ‏(@VoytekTheEA) - EA roadmaps are visualization of strategy. Use them to articulate known strategy or to help elicit it from business. #GartnerEA #entarch

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Favor enablement not control in your EA program. #GartnerEA

· Duncan Mundell ‏(@dcmundell) - Successful enterprise architecture is about doing the basics right. Focus on the business and communicate. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Agree with Keith Meador -> At the end of the day, the last mile is all that matters. Make your efforts signature ready #EntArch #GartnerEA

· Olivier Laquinte (‏@OLaquinte) - K.Meador, #starbucks |The job of an #EA is not to get the right answer, it's to get the best one in a collaborative way #gartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Keith Meador has captured the essence of EA. The fact he works for @Starbucks and is also from Seattle introduces no bias. #GartnerEA

· Mike Walker ‏(@mikejwalker) - Starbucks preso started w/ a coffee tasting & biz overview. Kudos to Keith on EA leadership and focus. #GartnerEA #EntArch

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - Coffee is a connection at Starbucks. EA is about connections as well. Well played coffee giant. #GartnerEA

· Brian Oberman ‏(@brianoberman) - Starbucks is giving out free coffee at their presentation. #GartnerEA @Starbucks #score pic.twitter.com/LyfXnDY612

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - On an innovation slide: Design serendipitous workspaces. <- Acceptance is a big cultural indicator. Trust me, I know. #GartnerEA

· Wes DeVault ‏(@wvipersg) - Use caution when trying to roll up risk Indicators to one indicator score. You may end up missing things you will need. #gartnerEA

· Michael McNamara ‏(@mfMcNamara) - WIIFT - What's in it for them? "... thats the bacon!" Cathleen Blanton #GartnerEA

· Fred (‏@froidianslip) - I've fallen in love with the six roles of technology innovation. Someone please tell my wife I'm sorry. #GartnerEA

· Brian Damiani ‏(@bwdamiani) - Enterprise Architecture should be done with others, not to them. From Cathleen Blanton's Roadmap presentation. #GartnerEA

· Pete G. ‏(@pgrivas) - "Roadmapping uses a graphical approach to visualize strategy". Key phrase: visualize strategy #GartnerEA

· Vijay Nuthulapaty ‏(@VNatGartnerEA) - Gartner's message around business value driven EA is consistent, not hearing the same from the crowd though. Thoughts? #GartnerEA

What I find in my Enterprise Architecture travels as both a practitioner and advisor is that risk management is an essential capability of Enterprise Architecture.  I don’t see the EA function as a replacement of the corporate risk management function but extending, enhancing and supporting it.

As the arbiters of the overall technology portfolio that influences or even makes decisions on technology, architectures and ultimately the how investments are made, it becomes increasingly obvious to support this aspect. Whether you are a high technology company or a bank there is some level of risk identification, mitigation and management that occurs.

Since I believe in the risk management capability within EA, I thought that this certification might be useful to you as well. The Open Group is announcing a new certification program for risk analysts at the EA July conference in Philadelphia. If you have downloaded any of the Open Group risk and IT security management publications previously, you might already have a notification of this.

In conjunction with the program launch, there are several risk analysis learning opportunities that you should be aware of:

• The Value of Certification for Risk Analysts on June 20, 2013 @ 11.00 EDT
• Risk and IT Security: Developing and Communicating the InfoSec Value Proposition to Senior Management on June 25, 2013 @ 11.00 EDT
• At our Philadelphia conference, there will be a one-day risk analysis symposium on July 17, 2013
• CXOWARE will be delivering a two-day training course on FAIR-based risk analysis. This training is an ideal way for risk analysts to prepare for the Open Group certification exam, which will be available starting in early September.

Some of you may of noticed from a few of my tweets recently that my posts were coming from a few different sources. This wasn’t a mistake or a “fake” Mike Walker running around but a deliberate approach to my publishing.

After a lot of thought and consideration I decided that I have been covering a broad range of topics on www.MikeTheArchitect.com with topics ranging from the discipline of Enterprise Architecture, executive level content and even some Solution Architecture. Some of which is good and in alignment with the core EA topics of www.MikeTheArchitect.com but others a bit broader and loose in alignment. This is combined with my broad range of interests and activities as a strategic advisor that exposes me to a wide range of experiences and insights that I like to share with all of you. 

To make my content a bit more digestible and tailored to you I want publish to the appropriate sites so you get what you need.  As a result I will be publishing on these three sites:

 

Mike The Architect
(http://www.MikeTheArchitect.com)

I will continue publishing to “Mike The Architect” with Enterprise Architecture proven practices, guidance, news and insights.

 

CIO.com Enterprise Forum (http://www.enterprisecioforum.com/en/blogs/mikejwalker)

I plan on publishing content suited for CxO’s, executives and other business leaders here.

 

HP Performance Discover Blog(http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1414875)

This will be a resource for IT leaders looking for strategic insights and best practices to define, measure and achieve better performance.

 

Enjoy!

This year the Open Group is doing something very different with their conference from previous years, they are verticalizing. Smart move. With all the talk about business centric Enterprise Architecture this is a smart direction on the Open Group’s part. This get’s us one step past just “talking about the business” generally without any application but to the heart of each set of concerns that businesses have.

The conference will be held in Philadelphia on July 15-17, 2013 with Member Meetings  set post conference on July 18, 2013. If this conference of interest the early bird registration ends May 31, 2013.  To register go here. In line with the conference The Open Group is also giving delegates at our conference in Philadelphia the opportunity to combine the three day conference with some additional training events on Thursday 18 July and Friday 19 July called Professional Days. Looks to be some good deals from partners on training on the following topic areas:

• FAIR Risk Analyst
• TOGAF® 9 Foundation
• ArchiMate® 2.0 Certification

About the Event

The first two days of the summit will focus on Enterprise Transformation issues concerning three core vertical industry sectors: Finance and Commerce, Government & Defense, and Healthcare. Day three will offer more detailed workshops and tutorials on business, professional development and technically focused topics.

Below are the additional topics areas:

• Enterprise Architecture  
• TOGAF® 9
• ArchiMate®  
• Cloud Computing and Data Architecture
• Information Security and Risk Management   
• Distributed Services Architecture  
• Disruptive Technologies
• Business Architecture  
• Trusted Technology  
• Platform 3.0  
• Future Technology Trends

It has been a few years since I have attended this event but this year I had the great opportunity to go to the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Conference. This year it was held from 20 - 23 May in National Harbor, MD.

Gartner presented its latest research from the past year, recommendations and best practices from their many years of research. This year was a record breaking year for Gartner with an all time high of attendance. With year over year growth, this shows not only the value of this conference but also of Enterprise Architecture. Another point of note is that the majority of the practitioners represent the financial services and healthcare verticals respectively. These two industries continue to show strong support for EA.

Building on several research notes and toolkits, Business Outcome Driven Enterprise Architecture was the theme for this year. The theme builds on the notion that Enterprise Architecture should continue to evolve out of the IT Architecture centric approach (only focusing on technology or applications) and move into a top-down centric approach. I couldn’t agree more.

While this isn't a necessarily a new concept, it was certainly good to see Gartner continue to push this. I believe it’s the right direction for EA as I am sure most of you do too. I talked about this in my keynote at the Open Group Conference in 2011.  I like Gartner, talked about what the future of EA may look like. It’s eerily in line with my keynote presentation called, The New World of Enterprise Architecture. Below are the characteristics of that new EA:

There are more descriptions of Enterprise Architecture as a whole but these are the key characteristics of the new world of Enterprise Architecture.

• Enterprise Transformation – EA is now and in the future focusing at the enterprise level and emerging out of the project and program level. This is necessary change to get the proper breadth to ensure that solutions are aligned to the business objectives but also maximized for the whole of the company rather than a specific function or business unit.
• Innovation for Growth – Enterprise Architects will provide innovation services to the enterprise by distilling key market trends from a business and technology perspective. An example of this is the effect that mobility or cloud computing has on specific business models.
• More than Technology – EA is often confused with IT architecture but EA is much more than technology and primarily focused on providing value for the business.
• Meaningful Business Partnerships – We use the words align business to IT. For EA’s it’s much more. EA’s must partner with the business. This means we don’t just distill a set of goals and objectives but we work with the business to rationalize, challenge, propose and aid in the business transformation activities. 
• Corporate Sustainability – EA’s play a key role in ensuring the long term success of the business through the enterprise capabilities and solutions we enable. Companies will start to use EA as an insurance policy once we are able to prove this model in a consistent way.
• Drive through Emotional Intelligence – This is a key theme for enterprise architects. It allows EA’s to have the social and emotional intelligence to lead an organization from these key characteristics.

 

While it’s not completely brand new, it doesn’t have to be as this notion is still maturating. With all the business driven EA industry research, articles and guidance out there it’s tough to calibrate what is working and what isn’t for some time now what Gartner has provided a great deal of evidence behind this continuing shift in Enterprise Architecture.

The evidence of this shift, as Philip Allega points out is that 1.1 trillion dollars of IT spend is influenced by Enterprise Architects. Philip challenged the audience to see how much each of us can continue to affect that pie.

 

The salient points from the conference includes:

• EA Matters – Attendance and customer case studies shows that EA does matter and it is alive and well. It is continuing to evolve and hit rough patches but we are still seeing business value in pursuing.
• Think like Your Business – If you think like them, you will get them what they need to be successful. All EA’s and even IT is part of a business ecosystem all dependant on each other with a role. Focusing on the ultimate business outcome will ensure you are providing value back to the the overall business and not talking in business speak just for the sake of it.
• EA's Should "Tried and True" Techniques - EA's will continue to use traditional tools such as roadmaps to manage the change with trends like big data
• Emerging Markets - With Brazil, Russia, India and China or BRIC make up a total of 29% of the worlds GDP. EA's have a unique position to enable these very complex ecosystems. For more on my views on this check out a post from ‘09 called, “Is Architecture Different Based on Where You Live?”
• Risk and Compliance - The world is flat or at least flattening. With this world economics and government policy matters to you.
• Disruptive Technology Continues to Surprise Us – With emerging disruptions like Gamification, they continue to challenge and grow the enterprise. The trick now is to understand the concept of disruptive forces and create models to manage it to then harness the innovation.  Gartner predicts that by 2015 40% of global 1000 companies will use gamification as a strategy.

For those conference goers out there I wanted to let you all know that I will be at a few US based conferences this year. There may be a few more later in the year but this is what I know for now.

Like many others, I have really enjoyed discussing EA topics, debating the latest trends and frankly, learning from you. Earlier this year I had a great time talking to many of you at the Troux World Conference. That’s the real highlight for me.

If you are attending the event listed below and want to have a meet up please direct message me on Twitter @mikejwalker.

Here are the events I’ll be at for the next few months:

• Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit (22 - 23 May, 2013 | National Harbor, MD)
• HP Discover (11-13 June, 2013 | Las Vegas, NV)
• Open Group Conference (15 – 18 July, 2013 | Philadelphia, PA)

I will be presenting at the Open Group Conference but not at HP Discover (missed the submission window!) and Gartner.

Again, looking forward to seeing you!

As Enterprise Architects we drive to maximize value in our companies. With most EA teams residing within an IT area under a CIO we can find ourselves bogged down by the technology weighing down on decisions. The challenge with that is one of context. Without understanding “Why” we are solving a problem will most certainly inhibit the value in which is achieved.

So the question is, do we really know our business before we make architecture decisions? What tools do we use or don’t use to understand the business model?

I was happy to see Alexander Osterwalder  publish on the Harvard Business Review blog a post titled, “A Better Way to Think About Your Business Model”.  Certainly take a look at this. His post provides some high-level information on why it’s important to use the model. If you find value in the model as I do, you will want to pick up his book, Business Model Generation. Personally I like the hard copy best given it’s so visual. There is also an iPad app that you can get that works really well too. You can find it in the Apple App Store here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/business-model-toolbox/id431605371?mt=8 

As I eluded to above, I have found a lot of value in this tool. It is one that I've been using for quite some time now. It’s a brilliant model that helps you dissect what your business is. The data itself isn’t rocket science. It’s the conversation that it triggers which drives the value. I often apply this in workshop like sessions rather than one off data collecting exercises.

 

 

WARNING: While it can allude to, the Business Model Canvas does not tell you why your business has been built in the fashion it has. This is within strategy oriented methods and models.

The business model canvas can really help you to understand your business. What is nice about it is that the questions can be applied at multiple levels. You can apply it at a corporate level or apply it to a business unit.

As an example of this, I applied it to an already established enterprise architecture organization. I used the model to assess the organization on its “health”. Asking those business oriented questions forces us to think as if we were a business unit, and that’s not a bad thing. The results were quite amazing because it got the right level of conversation and thinking going to evolve the overall value proposition.

 

About the Business Model Canvas

If your not familiar with the Business Model Canvas below is a two minute overview of the Business Model Canvas, a tool for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. The business model canvas — as opposed to the traditional, intricate business plan — helps organizations conduct structured, tangible, and strategic conversations around new businesses or existing ones. Leading global companies like GE, P&G, and Nestlé use the canvas to manage strategy or create new growth engines, while start-ups use it in their search for the right business model. The canvas's main objective is to help companies move beyond product-centric thinking and towards business model thinking.

 

 

Find out more at http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com

Some of you may already know from my LinkedIn profile that I have joined Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the Software Division as an Strategy and Enterprise Architecture Advisor.

As I was evaluating HP I didn’t fully appreciate HP’s status in the world of IT. I suppose I just thought of some of the acquisitions and the printer on my desk. It was fascinating to research this historic company and see where they are today.

Below are a few eye opening stats that changed my view and perceptions:

• HP is the only high tech company as a fortune 10 company according to Forbes 2012 Fortune 500 list (with companies like Apple 17th, IBM 19th, Microsoft 37th, and Dell 44th)
• #1 server vendor in shipments for 10+ consecutive years
• #6th largest software company in the world with (#1 distributed systems management software, #1 automated software quality and #1 enterprise search and discovery)
• #1 PC market share, including workstations

Once I did my research and joined I decided to take a stop by the historic HP garage where it all started for Silicon Valley or commonly referred to as the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley".

Back to what I’m doing for HP

As most of you may know, I have served in an advisory capacity for some time so the advisor role is a very familiar role for me. When at Microsoft this was a key component to my role. Likewise at HP, I will be an advisor to HP’s top customers. What is interesting about this role is that it isn’t a consulting (billable) type of engagement and there are no quotas that are measured on sales of products or services. This was done very deliberately so that it drove incentives of the enterprise architects to have a business driven and product neutral conversation with customers. HP saw from some high technology vendors with similar offerings that the enterprise architects became more product / solution architects that used the EA vocabulary.

My role as an Enterprise Architecture and Strategy Advisor is broken up into thirds:

1. Strategy and Enterprise Architecture Advisor – A wide range of activities happen here. From ad-hoc engagements that last a half day to workshops that last multiple days such as strategic discussions, strategy and architecture review,  business capability analysis, architecture design session, enterprise blueprinting review or an EA health check.
2. Enterprise Architecture Community Development – I will continue with blogging, whitepapers, speaking engagements and increased involvement into standards bodies. I will continue to provide thought leadership into the TOGAF standard along with getting plugged into other areas that are impactful to enterprise architects. You may even see a architect community spring up as well.
3. Provide the Voice of the Customer Back to HP – A very smart move on HP’s part is this aspect to the role in which brings all the insights from the previous two areas back into the HP machine. This could range from simple process improvement to insights into market trends to product challenges.

 

Well that’s it on that front. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to comment or send me an email.

Gartner just released a report entitled, "EA Practitioners Have Significant Influence on $1.1 Trillion in Enterprise IT Spend” that strongly links to their Business Outcome Driven Enterprise Architecture.  This is interesting article because it’s shows the latest thinking from real EA practitioners with some real good stats on where we are at from an industry perspective. 

What is also clear is that EA is now positioned to do what we have wanted to do for years, drive business results not just technology decisions. This is a big opportunity for us and it is now our opportunity to lose.

 

EA Practitioners Have Significant Influence on $1.1 Trillion in Enterprise IT Spend

Fifty percent of enterprise architecture (EA) practitioners have a significant impact on enterprise IT budget activities and decisions, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc. A July 2012 Gartner survey of EA practitioners found that half of EA practitioners have an influence over their organization's IT budget allocation that is either "final decision maker" or "great deal of influence."

Based on the EA survey results from Gartner events in North America and Europe, analysts estimate that EA practitioners have a "final decision-making" influence on $331 billion in worldwide enterprise IT spend and a "great deal of influence" on $774 billion in worldwide enterprise IT spending. Overall, EA practitioners have an influence that is either "final decision maker" or "great deal of influence" on $1.1 trillion in worldwide enterprise IT spending.

"Overwhelmingly we find EA practitioners focused on delivering on business value and strategic transformation," said Philip Allega, managing vice president at Gartner. "Gone are the days of just 'doing EA' with little value or impact. Sixty-eight percent of organizations surveyed stated that they are focusing their EA program on aligning business and IT strategies, delivering strategic business and IT value, or enabling major business transformation."

Gartner is leading the way in defining and mastering a radical new approach to EA, which is business outcome-driven EA. Leading EA practitioners are focused on creating diagnostic deliverables to help business and IT leaders respond to business and technology disruptions.

"This new generation of EA practitioners offers technology and service providers (TSPs) with an opportunity as well as a threat," said Mr. Allega. "Technology and service providers should develop targeted marketing to this new generation of EA practitioner as they have a significant influence on their organization buying decisions. Those that fail to understand the priorities, strategic focus and impact of EA practitioners will jeopardize their ability to sell into an organization."

Gartner has identified the impact of EA trends on IT purchasing decisions, and has the following advice and recommendations to help TSPs target this audience more effectively:

In organizations supporting EA as strategic, and as collaborative between business leaders and IT, TSPs will increasingly find EA practitioners influencing IT spend.

EA practitioners have a high degree of influence over emerging technology purchases, with 52 percent of the EA practitioners surveyed reporting directly to a CIO or CTO. They are also "very involved" in integration consulting services (64 percent) and business applications (52 percent). As EA practitioners continue to focus on integrating and aligning with business priorities and actively working with business leaders, their degree of influence on business intelligence tools, workplace tools and business applications will likely increase as well.

Organizations starting, restarting or renewing their EA efforts present an opportunity for providers to market to and influence a new generation of EA practitioners.

The survey revealed that 77 percent of respondents were either restarting or renewing EA efforts (18 percent), initiating EA for the first time (34 percent) or taking EA efforts to the next level (25 percent). In organizations starting EA for the first time, EA practitioners have a significant influence on IT budget decisions, but significantly less have decision-making authority. These new and restarting organizations present an opportunity for TSPs to target a new generation of EA practitioners.

As organizations become more mature in supporting EA, they will have a greater degree of influence on IT budget allocations to products and services.

Many organizations begin their EA journey by focusing inside the IT organization on system consolidation, standardization and cost management. As they mature, this evolves into looking more closely at the "alignment" between the business strategy and IT strategy. From here the EA program evolves further to become "business outcome-oriented," such that in a mature EA program, other areas of decision making are guided and influenced by business outcome-driven EA.

 

More Information

Additional information is available in the Gartner report, "EA Practitioners Have Significant Influence on $1.1 Trillion in Enterprise IT Spend”. The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2286216.

 Continuing on with our demystification series, I will talk about the comments I hear form people with regards to the TOGAF certification itself and the process. When I hear comments about this topic they usually gravitate to one end of the extreme to another. I often don't hear a middle ground. This for the obvious reason is an area of extreme passion, and rightfully so. After all we are talking about your career credentials, time investments in learning and the stressful certification process that architects will have to make. 

In this post, I will talk about the specific myth that TOGAF certification is weak. I suppose that the term "weak" is a matter of perspective. As we walk through the post we can explore if TOGAF certification is weak and but a bit more qualification around that term.

 

Overview

With a total of 21,390 certified TOGAF practitioners worldwide, the TOGAF certification has proved to be a market leader in the industry. Combined With all those TOGAF practicing architects and the amount of focus on TOGAF there is bound to be opinions and perceptions around what it takes to become certified along with the level of quality in the process.

Taking a step back, TOGAF certification is based on its extensive experience certifying UNIX implementations. The Open Group believed that the certification process needed to be demonstrably objective—that is, the same results would be achieved, regardless of who executed the process. So, in addition to the publication of the TOGAF framework, The Open Group membership defined a policy for certifying TOGAF products (specifically tools and training), services (consulting), and individuals (practitioners). The requirements for certifying TOGAF tools, training courses, professional services, and individual architects are defined by four TOGAF product standards. TOGAF-certified training courses and TOGAF-certified professional services must be delivered by TOGAF-certified architects.

There are two ways an architect can become TOGAF certified: by taking TOGAF certified training, or by passing a TOGAF-certified examination. The training must address, and the examination will test, knowledge and awareness of TOGAF, and a thorough and complete knowledge of the elements of TOGAF listed in the TOGAF 9.1 Framework specification.

 

Is the Certification Weak?

Lets look at the areas that I have heard scrutiny on the TOGAF certification:

• Achieving the Certification - The process one goes through to get certified. This is the least common concern I hear about but it does come up. 
• Pass Mark - By far this is the easiest to focus on. The TOGAF pass rate is set at 55% and 60%. 
• Test Style - I sometimes hear the TOGAF certification as a multiple guess exam. 

 

Achieving the Certification
As I was sitting in on a training session for TOGAF a few months back this topic came up. It's a small misconception but I still wanted to talk about it because I think it's an important point to understand. The point at the training session was, "When do we take the test to become certified". Most people I talk to believe it is simple to get TOGAF certified. The common view (at least with the folks I talk to) is that all you need to do is go to a TOGAF trainer and then take a test at the end of the 4 days.

This simply isn't true. To preserve the integrity of the certification process The Open Group uses a third party called Prometric to administer the defined process. This ensures that there isn't a chance that training providers or other educators alter the process to make it easier (or harder for that matter) for the candidates.

It's subtle but there is an important point here, the TOGAF certification isn't just a certification that you can get by just going to the training and getting the award at the end of the class. There is a lot more to it.

 

How does the Pass Mark Compare to Other Certifications

The TOGAF Level 2 certification, which most people get is set at a 60% pass rate. I think this is a little low but I think it is acceptable. Lets face it, there is a lot of material to learn inside TOGAF. I'm not convinced that if you raised the pass mark up that it would yield significant better results. I believe that there are other factors at play to increase it's benefits to practitioners .

Let's compare TOGAF to other certifications. Below are industry leading certifications with their pass marks:

• ITIL - Multiple choice with a pass mark of 65%
• COBIT - 56% pass mark required or 450 right answers out of 800
• PMI - A 61% or higher is required to pass 

As you can see from the sampling of certifications in other disciplines TOGAF is not that dissimilar from other pass marks. Again, slightly lower but still in the same ball park.

 

Conclusion

Hopefully what I was able to do was to dispel some of the myths on TOGAF certification along with some hard numbers and comparisons. As I have said a few times in this post, I think the pass mark is on the low side but it's still in the right range and isn't drastically different from the industry. 

So, love TOGAF or hate TOGAF it is the market leader in Enterprise Architecture certifications. The number of TOGAF certified praticiners continues to increase year after year and we see continued support from organizations world wide that recognize that as the defacto standard. I see the evidence from two primary areas:

• From you… My peers in the industry. Linkedin forums and other social media platforms have given you an open microphone to voice your opinion. This Linkedin thread is just one example: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/What-is-best-certification-should-36248.S.102102747 
• The market… I have personally seen numbers as high as 60% of EA specific RFP's / RFI's that either require or prefer TOGAF expertise for EA specific work to be done. A post that I wrote two years ago called, "Enterprise Architecture Certifications Distilled" goes through number two years ago (which are staggering alone).  

 

I have gotten a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) discussion on the TOGAF Demystification Series. In one of the posts entitled, "TOGAF Demystification Series: TOGAF Sucks, Incomplete And Overly Complex" there were many comments made about this one in particular. All of the comments made for an interesting conversation but I did like the thoroughness of one in particular. I thought Dave Hornford made some extremely salient points and provided a bit of context from the perspective of the Chair of the TOGAF standard.

Since these great responses were buried in a comment thread I decided that it would be beneficial to all of you to promote this to a post as well given the meaningful content.

Note: For extended context click on the link above to see the full context of the responses. I have left comments unedited. 

 

Dave Hornford Addresses Misconceptions Surrounding TOGAF

Dave Hornford is a Managing Partner for Conexiam as well as the Chair for the Open Group Architecture Forum (TOGAF)

 

Addressing comments about the quality of TOGAF

Is it as good as I want it to be, not a chance. Can I change it? Of course, all I have to do is obtain a consensus of a project team. The Architecture Forum then reviews this consensus, and then the member companies of the Open Group review it. At every point comments, concerns, objections & improvements must be addressed by consensus. I live Mike's challenge.

In response to a misunderstanding of how TOGAF is applied and the meaning behind Requirements Phase in TOGAF

I do not understand the charge that TOGAF fails because it focuses on requirements? All I can assume is that special meaning is carried into TOGAF. Wherever possible in TOGAF we try to use a concept that can carry a range of specific detail - requirements is one of my favorite examples. TOGAF defines requirement as "a statement of need that must be met by a particular architecture or work package".

TOGAF's requirements are a nice broad concept - a statement of need that must be met by the architecture. What else an I going to find in the strategy, goals, objectives, hopes, fears, dreams, courses of action, and constraints other than requirements? The set of needs that must be met by the architecture.

Further, no weaseling in TOGAF. If we follow the thread in requirements & stakeholders, TOGAF highlights that best practice is provide a name. No hiding behind vague assertions like ‘shareholder value’, or ‘the strategy’. Instead we take those requirements and trace them back to a stakeholder. Show me who wants something and then I can perform trade-off between that stakeholder's requirements and the requirements of the other stakeholders. I can weigh, assess, rank, and refine. And following best practice: review with my stakeholders and use the governance process to provide assurance. My only escape from this tyranny is to get one-or-more stakeholder's to change the requirement, at which point I have a different set that must be met. No wonder TOGAF talks about iteration.

Doing real architecture is hard because of this point - it must address the complete set of requirements. No hiding. Get out in the open and show your work. Describe a target that best addresses the complete set of requirements and deliver a roadmap that will move the organization from where it is to where it wants to be within the capability of the organization to change. (Phase A, B, C, D, E & Requirements Management)

Second, I cannot see how TOGAF's ADM can be considered a solution approach. If I'm doing solution architecture why would I develop an Architecture Vision (Phase A), develop a Roadmap (Phase E) then integrate the Implementation & Migration Plan into the organization's portfolio (Phase F) and manage the lifecycle of my architecture (Phase H). I've heard many ways people wrap a solution approach, complete with proof-of-concept and RFPs into the ADM. But, in my opinion it’s a stretch.

 

Dave's usage of TOGAF in his engagements

Do TOGAF or do EA? Sorry I don't do TOGAF. I get paid to either deliver useful architecture or improve the capability of an EA team. TOGAF is a tool, not a goal. It is an EA Framework that provides scaffolding for capability, content & method. To quote TOGAF Part I, "the purpose of enterprise architecture is to optimize across the enterprise the often fragmented legacy of processes (both manual and automated) into an integrated environment that is responsive to change and supportive of the delivery of the business strategy"

In my opinion, too many words. In essence darned good - optimize across the enterprise the activity of the enterprise to create an integrated environment that is agile and supports current strategy... That's worth getting out of bed for.

 

Addressing TOGAF and ArchiMate linkages

Lastly, you contend TOGAF fails because it isn't hand-in-glove with Archimate. Here, I may run into trouble at the next set of member meetings. Archimate is a subset of the concepts required to completely describe an enterprise architecture.

This is not a slur on Archimate, by being a subset it allows me to use a reasonable set of entities, perform traceability between the entities and have a graphical notation I can learn quickly. Beautiful. Truly beautiful.

But, if I need to describe organizational culture, fully map strategy, associate capital allocation, participation of multiple third parties, return on equity and taxation, identify information entities by provenance & usage restriction, clouds and account for last mile connectivity to a specific restricted platform - I may find Archimate limited. When I pull out the complete set of modeling techniques to describe these entities I may have the richness of a 1/2 dozen domain specific modeling techniques and have to perform acrobatics to link them. There never is a free lunch. Don’t forget, I enjoy aerobatics.

When I do EA I need the freedom to describe what I need to describe to address the problem at hand - I will never let the toolset be constrained to a general-purpose saw. Sometimes a spoke shave, or coping saw or Mintzburg's Organigraphs are needed. By the same token, I am very glad that I have a general-purpose tool that works reasonably well most of the time.

TOGAF aligns to my need for freedom and my expectation for a comprehensive toolset - there is a reasonable content-meta-model that provides a reasonable set of entities. I can read the mapping papers to Archimate. Or, I can roll my own and use Mintzburgh's Organigraphic, Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas & the OMG's Business Motivation Model: exquisite richness and an integration challenge. Clearly a job for daveML. Or, use Archimate, and have a reasonable set that provides pre-defined end-to-end traceability. TOGAF is clear, use the tool needed. Describe what is necessary to understand, create a target that meets the set of stakeholder requirements, create a roadmap to traverse the gap and govern the builders to keep them on the path of goodness.

Regardless of my tooling, if I have the elements of TOGAF calls for – governance, appropriate team, integration with corporate process, consistent method to develop an architecture & roadmap, stakeholders and requirements I have the underpinning to create a very good understanding of how the enterprise 'works'. Then I can do my job and optimize the future against the complete set of requirements. Good thing TOGAF is general purpose and provides a scaffold so I can address the problem I have in a manner consistent with the guy in the next office. When we use a minimum set of consistent entities we can even use each other’s work – although the guy in the next office does look askance at Organigraphics and Goal Structuring Notation.

I’d be happier if TOGAF was crisp on the distinction between concept and instantiation. Today I sometimes read an instantiation and have to derive the concept so I can re-instantiate appropriate to my problem. Perhaps the next release will make me happier.

 

Call to Action

I'll re-iterate Mike's challenge. Want to make the EA world better, join us in the Architecture Forum. But, be prepared to work to consensus with many of the world's leading practitioners. It’s a tough crowd. Specialist boutique consultants, global consulting practices and some of the most advanced in-house architects will review your work. You will be challenged to find what consistently works for a very broad set of problems. Not just mine, or yours, or Mike’s.

 

You can find out more about Dave Hornford at:

@davehornford
http://www.conexiam.com

 

A big thank you to all the folks that came to my presentation at the Troux World Conference last week. We had a full room of enterprise architects and EA consultants. Thank you for all your support and great questions. 

I wanted to  share with all of you my presentation given at the conference. Just like with most of my presentations there are lots of images that require a voice over. So, my apologies to those who are seeing this for the first time without hearing it in person. To remedy that a bit, I will post about the concepts form within the presentation over the course of the next few weeks . 

 

Highly impactful ea organizations make value driven decisions from Mike Walker

 

Summary

Enterprise Architects are faced with a rapidly changing business climate, competitive pressures and a shifting technology landscape that is forcing the enterprise to evolve. With this acceleration of change in the market it requires faster decisions that are well informed to maximize value. Enterprise Architects are at the tip of the spear to enable this change but need the tools.

In this session I will explore one of the proven practices that I have found from highly impactful Enterprise Architecture (EA) organizations, namely enterprise portfolios. Enterprise portfolios extend past the traditional project and program discipline to cover all aspects of the enterprise. Moving from disconnected, static and context-less pieces of data to a governed portfolio of enterprise knowledge that can maximize value and mitigate risk to our businesses.

 

The Troux Worldwide Conference is returning to Austin, Texas on March 19-20, 2013. If you are a Troux customer, partner, or actively involved in Enterprise Architecture (EA) or Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM), this is your opportunity to enjoy peer networking and joint learning with a focus on delivering rapid results with Troux EPM solutions.

I'm flattered and feel very fortunate to be invited back to speak on the EA Industry Expert Panel for a third year in a row! This is certainly an honor and I thank Troux for the opportunity to be invited back to this exclusive event each year. I especially am humbled to be surrounded by a great line up of speakers and EA practitioners. 

It should be a great event!

If there are folks that are the conference or in the Austin area that want to meet up to discuss EA please let me know either through the comments on this post or through Twitter. 

 You can see me in two sessions:

1. Presentation - Highly Impactful EA Organizations Make Value Driven Decisions
2. EA Industry Expert Panel - Success in the Connected Enterprise

  Below I have provided the descriptions of each:

Highly Impactful EA Organizations Make Value Driven Decisions
Enterprise Architects are faced with a rapidly changing business climate, competitive pressures and a shifting technology landscape that is forcing the enterprise to evolve. With this acceleration of change in the market it requires faster decisions that are well informed to maximize value. Enterprise Architects are at the tip of the spear to enable this change but need the tools.

In this session I will explore one of the proven practices that I have found from highly impactful Enterprise Architecture (EA) organizations, namely enterprise portfolios. Enterprise portfolios extend past the traditional project and program discipline to cover all aspects of the enterprise. Moving from disconnected, static and context-less pieces of data to a governed portfolio of enterprise knowledge that can maximize value and mitigate risk to our businesses.

Success in the Connected Enterprise

Success in the connected enterprise requires that executives understand the cause-effect relationships that exist across their organization. They must know what can and should change, when to change it, and where to take risks, all while avoiding unintended consequences. Transforming people, product and processes is difficult, but it is even harder without having access to detailed and reliable knowledge about how the parts of their organizations fit together, operate and evolve. In this session our panelists will share their personal insights, and answer your questions, on how they use various portfolio concepts to navigate and guide critical decision-making in their organizations

I had had the pleasure of being on a panel of Enterprise Architecture (EA) experts at The Open Group Conference in Newport Beach, California. We were assembled to discuss complex trends such as big data, Cloud Computing, security, and overall IT transformation and how it can be enabled by The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF®) and the ArchiMate® modeling language.

The panel consisted of Chris Forde, General Manager for Asia-Pacific and Vice President of Enterprise Architecture at The Open Group; Iver Band, Vice Chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum and Enterprise Architect at The Standard, a diversified financial services company; Mike Walker, Senior Enterprise Architecture Adviser and Strategist at HP and former Director of Enterprise Architecture at Dell; Henry Franken, the Chairman of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum and Managing Director at BIZZdesign, and Dave Hornford, Chairman of the Architecture Forum at The Open Group and Managing Partner at Conexiam. I served as the 

A big thanks to our moderator Dana Gardner from Interarbor Solutions.

See below for the key excerpts:

Complexity from Big Data and Cloud Trends Makes Architecture Tools like ArchiMate and TOGAF More Powerful, Says Expert Panel

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read on the Open Group Blog,  full transcript or download a copy. 

Gardner: Is there something about the role of the enterprise architect that is shifting?

Walker: There is less of a focus on the traditional things we come to think of EA such as standards, governance and policies, but rather into emerging areas such as the soft skills, Business Architecture, and strategy.

 To this end I see a lot in the realm of working directly with the executive chain to understand the key value drivers for the company and rationalize where they want to go with their business. So we’re moving into a business-transformation role in this practice.

 At the same time, we’ve got to be mindful of the disruptive external technology forces coming in as well. EA can’t just divorce from the other aspects of architecture as well. So the role that enterprise architects play becomes more and more important and elevated in the organization.

Two examples of this disruptive technology that are being focused on at the conference are Big Data and Cloud Computing. Both are providing impacts to our businesses not because of some new business idea but because technology is available to enhance or provide new capabilities to our business. The EA’s still do have to understand these new technology innovations and determine how they will apply to the business.

We need to get really good enterprise architects, it’s difficult to find good ones. There is a shortage right now especially given that a lot of focus is being put on the EA department to really deliver sound architectures.

Not standalone

Gardner: We’ve been talking a lot here about Big Data, but usually that’s not just a standalone topic. It’s Big Data and Cloud, Cloud, mobile and security.

So with these overlapping and complex relationships among multiple trends, why is EA and things like the TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate modeling language especially useful?

Band: One of the things that has been clear for a while now is that people outside of IT don’t necessarily have to go through the technology function to avail themselves of these technologies any more. Whether they ever had to is really a question as well.

One of things that EA is doing, and especially in the practice that I work in, is using approaches like the ArchiMate modeling language to effect clear communication between the business, IT, partners and other stakeholders. That’s what I do in my daily work, overseeing our major systems modernization efforts. I work with major partners, some of which are offshore.

I’m increasingly called upon to make sure that we have clear processes for making decisions and clear ways of visualizing the different choices in front of us. We can’t always unilaterally dictate the choice, but we can make the conversation clearer by using frameworks like the TOGAF standard and the ArchiMate modeling language, which I use virtually every day in my work.

Hornford: The fundamental benefit of these tools is the organization realizing its capability and strategy. I just came from a session where a fellow quoted a Harvard study, which said that around a third of executives thought their company was good at executing on its strategy. He highlighted that this means that two-thirds are not good at executing on their strategy.

If you’re not good at executing on your strategy and you’ve got Big Data, mobile, consumerization of IT and Cloud, where are you going? What’s the correct approach? How does this fit into what you were trying to accomplish as an enterprise?

 

An enterprise architect that is doing their job is bringing together the strategy, goals and objectives of the organization. Also, its capabilities with the techniques that are available, whether it’s offshoring, onshoring, Cloud, or Big Data, so that the organization is able to move forward to where it needs to be, as opposed to where it’s going to randomly walk to.

Forde: One of the things that has come out in several of the presentations is this kind of capability-based planning, a technique in EA to get their arms around this thing from a business-driver perspective. Just to polish what Dave said a little bit, it’s connecting all of those things. We see enterprises talking about a capability-based view of things on that basis.

Gardner: Let’s get a quick update. The TOGAF framework, where are we and what have been the highlights from this particular event?

 

Minor upgrade

Hornford: In the last year, we’ve published a minor upgrade for TOGAF version 9.1 which was based upon cleaning up consistency in the language in the TOGAF documentation. What we’re working on right now is a significant new release, the next release of the TOGAF standard, which is dividing the TOGAF documentation to make it more consumable, more consistent and more useful for someone.

Today, the TOGAF standard has guidance on how to do something mixed into the framework of what you should be doing. We’re peeling those apart. So with that peeled apart, we won’t have guidance that is tied to classic application architecture in a world of Cloud.

What we find when we have done work with the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) for banking architecture, Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture (SABSA) for security architecture, and the TeleManagement Forum, is that the concepts in the TOGAF framework work across industries and across trends. We need to move the guidance into a place so that we can be far nimbler on how to tie Cloud with my current strategy, how to tie consumerization of IT with on-shoring?

Franken: The ArchiMate modeling language turned two last year, and the ArchiMate 1.0 standard is the language to model out the core of your EA. The ArchiMate 2.0 standard added two specifics to it to make it better aligned also to the process of EA.

According to the TOGAF standard, this is being able to model out the motivation, why you’re doing EA, stakeholders and the goals that drive us. The second extension to the ArchiMate standard is being able to model out its planning and migration.

So with the core EA and these two extensions, together with the TOGAF standard process working, you have a good basis on getting EA to work in your organization.

Gardner: Mike, fill us in on some of your thoughts about the role of information architecture vis-à-vis the larger business architect and enterprise architect roles.

Walker: Information architecture is an interesting topic in that it hasn’t been getting a whole lot of attention until recently.

Information architecture is an aspect of Enterprise Architecture that enables an information strategy or business solution through the definition of the company’s business information assets, their sources, structure, classification and associations that will prescribe the required application architecture and technical capabilities.

Information architecture is the bridge between the Business Architecture world and the application and technology architecture activities.

The reason I say that is because information architecture is a business-driven discipline that details the information strategy of the company. As we know, and from what we’ve heard at the conference keynotes like in the case of NASA, Big Data, and security presentations, the preservation and classification of that information is vital to understanding what your architecture should be.

Least matured

From an industry perspective, this is one of the least matured, as far as being incorporated into a formal discipline. The TOGAF standard actually has a phase dedicated to it in data architecture. Again, there are still lots of opportunities to grow and incorporate additional methods, models and tools by the enterprise information management discipline.

Enterprise information management not only it captures traditional topic areas like master data management (MDM), metadata and unstructured types of information architecture but also focusing on the information governance, and the architecture patterns and styles implemented in MDM, Big Data, etc. There is a great deal of opportunity there.

From the role of information architects, I’m seeing more and more traction in the industry as a whole. I’ve dealt with an entire group that’s focused on information architecture and building up an enterprise information management practice, so that we can take our top line business strategies and understand what architectures we need to put there.

This is a critical enabler for global companies, because oftentimes they’re restricted by regulation, typically handled at a government or regional area. This means we have to understand that we build our architecture. So it’s not about the application, but rather the data that it processes, moves, or transforms.

Gardner: Up until not too long ago, the conventional thinking was that applications generate data. Then you treat the data in some way so that it can be used, perhaps by other applications, but that the data was secondary to the application.

But there’s some shift in that thinking now more toward the idea that the data is the application and that new applications are designed to actually expand on the data’s value and deliver it out to mobile tiers perhaps. Does that follow in your thinking that the data is actually more prominent as a resource perhaps on par with applications?

Walker: You’re spot on, Dana. Before the commoditization of these technologies that resided on premises, we could get away with starting at the application layer and work our way back because we had access to the source code or hardware behind our firewalls. We could throw servers out, and we used to put the firewalls in front of the data to solve the problem with infrastructure. So we didn’t have to treat information as a first-class citizen. Times have changed, though.

Information access and processing is now democratized and it’s being pushed as the first point of presentment. A lot of times this is on a mobile device and even then it’s not the corporate’s mobile device, but your personal device. So how do you handle that data?

It’s the same way with Cloud, and I’ll give you a great example of this. I was working as an adviser for a company, and they were looking at their Cloud strategy. They had made a big bet on one of the big infrastructures and Cloud-service providers. They looked first at what the features and functions that that Cloud provider could provide, and not necessarily the information requirements. There were two major issues that they ran into, and that was essentially a showstopper. They had to pull off that infrastructure.

The first one was that in that specific Cloud provider’s terms of service around intellectual property (IP) ownership. Essentially, that company was forced to cut off their IP rights.

 

Big business

As you know, IP is a big business these days, and so that was a showstopper. It actually broke the core regulatory laws around being able to discover information.

So focusing on the applications to make sure it meets your functional needs is important. However, we should take a step back and look at the information first and make sure that for the people in your organization who can’t say no, their requirements are satisfied.

Gardner: Data architecture is it different from EA and Business Architecture, or is it a subset? What’s the relationship, Dave?

Hornford: Data architecture is part of an EA. I won’t use the word subset, because a subset starts to imply that it is a distinct thing that you can look at on its own. You cannot look at your Business Architecture without understanding your information architecture. When you think about Big Data, cool. We’ve got this pile of data in the corner. Where did it come from? Can we use it? Do we actually have legitimate rights, as Mike highlighted, to use this information? Are we allowed to mix it and who mixes it?

When we look at how our business is optimized, they normally optimize around work product, what the organization is delivering. That’s very easy. You can see who consumes your work product. With information, you often have no idea who consumes your information. So now we have provenance, we have source and as we move for global companies, we have the trends around consumerization, Cloud and simply tightening cycle time.

Gardner: Of course, the end game for a lot of the practitioners here is to create that feedback loop of a lifecycle approach, rapid information injection and rapid analysis that could be applied. So what are some of the ways that these disciplines and tools can help foster that complete lifecycle?

Band: The disciplines and tools can facilitate the right conversations among different stakeholders. One of the things that we’re doing at The Standard is building cadres equally balanced between people in business and IT.

We’re training them in information management, going through a particular curriculum, and having them study for an information management certification that introduces a lot of these different frameworks and standard concepts.

 

Creating cadres

We want to create these cadres to be able to solve tough and persistent information management problems that affect all companies in financial services, because information is a shared asset. The purpose of the frameworks is to ensure proper stewardship of that asset across disciplines and across organizations within an enterprise.

Hornford: The core is from the two standards that we have, the ArchiMate standard and the TOGAF standard. The TOGAF standard has, from its early roots, focused on the components of EA and how to build a consistent method of understanding of what I’m trying to accomplish, understanding where I am, and where I need to be to reach my goal.

When we bring in the ArchiMate standard, I have a language, a descriptor, a visual descriptor that allows me to cross all of those domains in a consistent description, so that I can do that traceability. When I pull in this lever or I have this regulatory impact, what does it hit me with, or if I have this constraint, what does it hit me with?

If I don’t do this, if I don’t use the framework of the TOGAF standard, or I don’t use the discipline of formal modeling in the ArchiMate standard, we’re going to do it anecdotally. We’re going to trip. We’re going to fall. We’re going to have a non-ending series of surprises, as Mike highlighted.

“Oh, terms of service. I am violating the regulations. Beautiful. Let’s take that to our executive and tell him right as we are about to go live that we have to stop, because we can’t get where we want to go, because we didn’t think about what it took to get there.” And that’s the core of EA in the frameworks.

Walker: To build on what Dave has just talked about and going back to your first question Dana, the value statement on TOGAF from a business perspective. The businesses value of TOGAF is that they get a repeatable and a predictable process for building out our architectures that properly manage risks and reliably produces value.

The TOGAF framework provides a methodology to ask what problems you’re trying to solve and where you are trying to go with your business opportunities or challenges. That leads to Business Architecture, which is really a rationalization in technical or architectural terms the distillation of the corporate strategy.

From there, what you want to understand is information — how does that translate, what information architecture do we need to put in place? You get into all sorts of things around risk management, etc., and then it goes on from there, until what we were talking about earlier about information architecture.

If the TOGAF standard is applied properly you can achieve the same result every time, That is what interests business stakeholders in my opinion. And the ArchiMate modeling language is great because, as we talked about, it provides very rich visualizations so that people cannot only show a picture, but tie information together. Different from other aspects of architecture, information architecture is less about the boxes and more about the lines.

 

Quality of the individuals

Forde: Building on what Dave was saying earlier and also what Iver was saying is that while the process and the methodology and the tools are of interest, it’s the discipline and the quality of the individuals doing the work

Iver talked about how the conversation is shifting and the practice is improving to build communications groups that have a discipline to operate around. What I am hearing is implied, but actually I know what specifically occurs, is that we end up with assets that are well described and reusable.

And there is a point at which you reach a critical mass that these assets become an accelerator for decision making. So the ability of the enterprise and the decision makers in the enterprise at the right level to respond is improved, because they have a well disciplined foundation beneath them.

A set of assets that are reasonably well-known at the right level of granularity for them to absorb the information and the conversation is being structured so that the technical people and the business people are in the right room together to talk about the problems.

This is actually a fairly sophisticated set of operations that I am discussing and doesn’t happen overnight, but is definitely one of the things that we see occurring with our members in certain cases.

Hornford: I want to build on that what Chris said. It’s actually the word “asset.” While he was talking, I was thinking about how people have talked about information as an asset. Most of us don’t know what information we have, how it’s collected, where it is, but we know we have got a valuable asset.

I’ll use an analogy. I have a factory some place in the world that makes stuff. Is that an asset? If I know that my factory is able to produce a particular set of goods and it’s hooked into my supply chain here, I’ve got an asset. Before that, I just owned a thing.

I was very encouraged listening to what Iver talked about. We’re building cadres. We’re building out this approach and I have seen this. I’m not using that word, but now I’m stealing that word. It’s how people build effective teams, which is not to take a couple of specialists and put them in an ivory tower, but it’s to provide the method and the discipline of how we converse about it, so that we can have a consistent conversation.

When I tie it with some of the tools from the Architecture Forum and the ArchiMate Forum, I’m able to consistently describe it, so that I now have an asset I can identify, consume and produce value from.

 

Business context

Forde: And this is very different from data modeling. We are not talking about entity relationship, junk at the technical detail, or third normal form and that kind of stuff. We’re talking about a conversation that’s occurring around the business context of what needs to go on supported by the right level of technical detail when you need to go there in order to clarify.

As I was doing some market research for my EA's competency driven strategy I ran across an interesting article from late 2012 that validates the importance of a well educated, fully rounded and even certified Enterprise Architect. The article, "23 IT Certifications That Mean Higher Pay" posted on CIO.com in September of 2012, shows that companies value these skills and are willing to pay more. 

The data was pulled from the Foote Research Group quarterly 2012 IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report and its CEO David Foote spoke with CIO.com about how you can use certifications to get employers to show you the money.

The article separates the list into three tiers of percent added to base pay from the lowest to highest:

• 8% - 13% Added to Base
• 10% - 15% Added to Base
• 12% - 16% Added to Base

 

In the highest tier of 12% to 16% Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) gets top ranking in Enterprise Architecture certifications for largest percent premium added to your base salary. I received my Open CA certification in 2011 and was nominated to the certification board. It was quite the honor for both.

Afterwards I really wanted top share my experiences and write up a condensed version of what Open CA really was. You can find this information in the post entitled, "The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) Program Distilled".  

Two things I think this article says about our industry:

1. Baseline of Skills and Competencies - Whether it is Open CA or any other EA certification, I believe this shows a natural maturing in the EA discipline. The industry is bringing together a set of common and recognized set of skills and competencies through these certifications. In this case the EA market has recoginized Open CA as the most popular and perhaps the defacto standard for EA skills and competencies. 
2. Competencies of Skills - I liked seeing Open CA certification on this list rather than TOGAF or a Zachman certification (there are many others besides these two). The reason I prefer Open CA is because it is  competency based. Meaning it's about how and what you have done as a practitioner and not about what you know from reading a book or taking a class.  

 

For more information on Open CA: http://www.opengroup.org/openca/cert/ 

 

Also of note in that tier with Open CA is the Program Management Professional (PgMP) certification.

I've only heard this one a few times but since this myth was recently referenced in one of the comments of the post,  "TOGAF Demystification Series: TOGAF Sucks, Incomplete and Overly Complex" I thought it would be good to elevate it up to a post in case there was similar misconceptions out there.

To set the stage, the basis for this myth is that the creation of the TOGAF standard is done so by an elite and exclusive group of individuals in the EA community the jet set around the world to sunny tropical vacation destinations all the while eating all the free bagels and coffee one can consume.

That sounds like a lot of fun. Sign me up!

It's too bad this isn't real. 

So let's break this apart the myth into three digestible parts:

1. Set of Elite Individuals Driving the Standard
2. TOGAF Excludes Industry Developments and Research
3. The Standard is Developed in Leisurely Tropical Destinations

 

#1 - Set of Elite of Individuals Driving the Standard

This is by far the easiest one to dispel.  What you will find from the Open Group charter is that this concept goes against the grain of the core principles of the Open Group. This not only applies to  TOGAF but all of the standards that the Open Group creates.  You can find that this  dates all the way back to the UNIX days.  The process is open to any person employed by a member company can participate with no zero discrimination on any sort of politics, company status or individual status.

You can find this  statement on the Open Group's public facing website describing the process:

All member organizations of the Open Group are entitled to participate in one or more of The Open Group Forums — vendor-neutral environments where members share knowledge and resources, and collaborate on developing open IT standards and certifications. Covering a range of technical, business, legal and regulatory issues, each Open Group Forum addresses a specific functional area, and is fully supported by The Open Group’s resources.

Source: http://www.opengroup.org/getinvolved?tab=2 

The Open Group Forums and Work Groups are governed by the Open Group Standards Process which is governed by the following principles:

• Openness - Standards are developed in an open process.
• Consensus - Standards are based upon the consensus of the parties involved.
• Timely and Deterministic Process - Standards are developed using a deterministic process that delivers standards in a predictable and timely manner.
• Public Availability of Published Standards - Standards once published are made publicly available.
• No Legal Impediment to Implementation or Adoption - There must be no legal impediment to implementation or adoption of an Open Group Standard.
• Confidentiality - Material is kept confidential until published by The Open Group.

You can see evidence from my story referenced in the post  "TOGAF Demystification Series: TOGAF Sucks, Incomplete and Overly Complex" where I was able to come into the forum as a newcomer to the Architecture Forum and was able to effect change. I didn't have to be part of a ficticuiuos "good old club".

#2 - TOGAF Excludes Industry Developments and Research

The Open Group works just like most standards bodies do (that I know of). The standard is driven by it's members. The Open Group is an administrative funtion that helps enables its members rather than creating the standard. From my own experiences, I contrast this to my time in the financial services industry. I have participated in the following below and had indirect interaction with more:

• IFX
• SWIFT
• ACORD
• FSTC
• MBA 
• and many others

Each one of these standards bodies operate in a similar way as the Open Group. It is incumbent upon the members to bring the latest developments back to the forum to be vetted by the industry before getting published. There isn't a R&D arm that goes out and discovers what the standard should be and go and publish. The role of the standards body to to create to forum in which these experts in the industry can distill proven practices and not fads and emerging trends.

Why is this important to do it this way? It think it all boils down to the following attributes:

• Trustworthy - A standard you know has been vetted by your peers in the industry
• Credible - Give it was developed by your peers, there is a very high degree of it is based on real world deployments and lessons learned. 
• Foundational - This isn't the latest and greatest but rather the foundational proven practices in the industry.
• Low Risk - Given all the above factors this results in a lower risk of just going out to the market and pulling the trend of the year off the shelf and running with it. Given that these are proven practices, actually implemented with success it lowers your risk.  

Personally, this is what I want form a standards body. I want the standards body (in this case TOGAF)   to tell me what is the most vetted method and framework that I can use as a base for my arhiecture efforts, then I can apply the other emerging trends or other not so mainstream ideals to my company. This manages my risk exposure to my company.

If the standards body did the reverse and adopted all the latest ideas and trends I would imagine that there would be a great deal of redundancy, conflicts and lack of guidance on how to apply as a result. I'm personally not interested in that scenario. 

#3 - The Standard is Developed in Leisurely Tropical Destinations

This one isn't a very well informed aspect of this myth. I can tell you that I haven't been a fan of the some of the destinations picked and very few of these have actually been at a beach. 

This comes from a very specific comment below:

One does not need to join the forum and participate at meetings in sunny places in order to contribute to the EA field. In fact it should be the other way around. 

NOTE: I don't have full insight to the specific policies, procedures and overall plans that the conference planners have with regards to this specific myth. I will share with you what I do know of the process. I would imagine it's pretty close but if the Open Group has any further clarifications I welcome them as a revision to this post. 

I don't think there is a simple one answer for selection of destination or why the why are the member meetings are the way they are. There are a two core drivers you I think you have to understand about the member meetings (TOGAF development in the Architecture Forum) to really answer the question. Those are:

• Multi-Purpose Events - The events where the Architecture forum meets are multi-purposed in nature. They hold the practitioner conference, certification, forum and workgroup activities.
• Maximize Value for Customers - By linking the development of TOGAF to the practitioner conference it serves as a way to consolidate travel, foster networking, collaboration and increase the overall in take knowledge through the conference materials and presenters. 

Given these two drivers and let's say the myth is true (it's not) then this would be no different than any other mainstream conference. Looking at both pure technology, analyst and industry wide all of which go to resorts, beaches or tourist destinations. But I haven't seen one Open Group conference in Vegas yet. I can't count the number of times I've been to a standards meeting in Vegas.

So to be factual I pulled the conference locations and bolded the tourist detonations (that I would consider) . It's interesting that there isn't too many beaches listed:

List of 2013 Open Group conferences: Newport Beach, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Mumbai, India, New Delhi, India, Sydney, Philadelphia, London

List of 2012 Open Group conferences: Barcelona, Washington DC, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dubai, UAE, Cannes, France, San Francisco

Now you could contrast that with other conferences and standards setting meetings as well for example the insurance industry standard ACORD events where they too combine conference with standards meetings. 

Conclusion

Again with this post I want to have a fact based conversation about this topic. Like many others I think this is a perception issue. At first glance, this may seem true (or at some parts of this myth) but if we take a closer look I think you will see it as I do that these are just myths. 

I do think there is an opportunity for the Open Group to do as I am doing, proactively dispel these myths by publishing and sharing these views (if they agree w/ my views as I'm not sponsored by the Open Group to write any of this content) with the architecture community. It could be a learning series, a set of FAQs or even going out to online forums like Twitter and LinkedIn to address some of these concerns.  

Again, I hope this helps and if you want to contribute to the conversation I welcome you to join in on the comments on this post. 

Today @Dana_Gardner posted on twitter The Open Group Panel discussion on Big Data's Big Impact on Enterprise IT. It worth a watch as it gave a good primer on general concerns in the industry. My question to the panel got a cut due to a truncation issue so it may not have made a lot of sense but I wanted the panel to go deeper into the challenges they were expressing and give practical and applied guidance to the audience on how to confront some of these challenges, specifically on the compliance, risk and data segmentation areas. 

Below is the video and the description:

A panel of experts explores how big data changes the status quo for architecting the enterprise. Learn how enterprises should anticipate and correct the effects and impacts of big data, as well the simultaneous impacts of cloud and mobile computing.

 

The new issue of Architecture and Governance Magazine is out. This issues is centered around the Business Architecture practice with elements of Information Architecture. It's tiled, "Business Architecture: The Blueprint for Success?"

I was fortunate enough to be included in this edition. I speak about the definition of the Business and Information Architecture domains, their relationship to each other, and enabling techniques and models supporting each. 

You can find my article here: Walker Talks Business Architecture and the Best Practices for Using It 

 

To subscribe to A&G check it out at: http://architectureandgovernance.com/