EAdirections Tenth Anniversary Observations

Through ten years of working with dozens of companies, we have seen a lot of good and some not so good developments related to Enterprise Architecture. In recognition of those 10 years, those dozens of companies, and continued success, we would like to share them with you.

It’s About Time

Of the many reasons to have EA as part your company’s approach to decision-making, the one that is most often overlooked is that it will save you TIME. Saving time means moving forward faster.

EA Rediscovered – The Future State

One of the fundamental concepts in enterprise architecture is the creation of a Future State that holistically embodies directional guidance for decision-making.  The concept is often mis-understood and seems to have recently been lost in the noisy sea of conversations about models, frameworks, digital transformation, bimodal, driving short term results, and other methodology discussions.  In this podcast … Read more

DAMA DMBOK Offers Good Guidance for Information Management

The Data Management Association (DAMA) International is a prominent association for data management professionals.  They have accumulated and published a Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK) and a Dictionary of Terms.  For those struggling with establishing or improving their Information Management (IM) capabilities, DAMA offers some guidance that can help simplify and organize your efforts. The … Read more

What is True-EA?

True Enterprise Architecture (True-EA) is quite simply architecting the enterprise. “Isn’t this what Enterprise Architecture always has been?” you may be asking yourself. In actuality, the overwhelming majority of EA efforts that we have come in contact with over the last two decades have, in fact, been IT Enterprise Architecture (IT-EA) efforts. Tim Westbrock and … Read more

EA and the Internet of Things – 10 Thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the Internet of Things, from both a personal perspective and as it applies to EA.  In fact, I wrote about it in my “From the Editor” column in the most recent Architecture and Governance magazine (v12n2): I once thought consumer-oriented “Internet of Things” (IoT) device were novelties.  The … Read more

Characteristics of Effective EA (Revisited)

Effective and Proactive EA

Below you will see the content of a previous post, reposted for a couple of reasons.  One, I had a recent conversation with a client about this topic which brought it to front of mind.  Second, I have been having a lot of conversations with clients, prospects, George, and some of our peers regarding the … Read more

IT Strategy: Is it a function of Enterprise Architecture?

I recently saw a post in a LinkedIn forum (AEA) positing this questions.  Here is my response: If EA is truly business strategy driven, and encompasses all domains, including security, operations and organization (in addition to the traditional domains of business, info/data, app and infrastructure), then there is no such thing as IT strategy. The … Read more