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 Tips: Anchor Models

Anchor models are context diagrams that capture the essence of the enterprise as a simple graphic. They should be equally meaningful to both business and IT personnel and should be so intuitive that they don’t require a multi-page text narrative to understand. While we see many models created by EA teams, most are lower level … Read more

Federated EA in Larger vs. Smaller Enterprises

George and I are often asked “How is EA different between smaller and larger organizations?” There are a number of differences (amount of available resources, degree of complexity, flatness of the organization structure, number of elements in the application portfolio, etc.) that affect the approach, effectiveness, readiness and deliverables of EA.  But one that I think … Read more

Why No Business with EA?

So there I am sitting on a panel at the Troux Worldwide Conference a couple of weeks ago, answering interesting questions with some interesting co-panelists, when a thought struck me.  “After decades of positioning EA as a discipline for business-IT alignment, why aren’t EA programs more in tune with(driven by, owned by, participation from) the … Read more

Mobility and Social Networking: Do You Have a Need for a Strategy?

Two of the biggest trends that many companies are addressing right now are mobility and Social Networking.  Maybe second only to cloud computing in hype right now, these two areas  represent significant opportunities for many companies.  However, one thing that I have noticed is that sometimes the trends with a lot of hype get a … Read more

Common Denominator: Business First!

I am working with a couple different clients now on their approach to enterprise architecture, and not surprisingly, their approaches are vastly different. One company has a core group of EA’s, working primarily on what they have named Business Driven Target Architecture, which is a bit of a mix of business, application and data architecture.  The … Read more

What Every EA Leader MUST DO – This Month!”

Now that everyone is back from the holidays, relaxed and enthusiastic, it is a good time to take a look forward and update your EA program’s objectives for the new year. In our experience, most organizations have a very short window to accomplish this. It doesn’t take long before the enthusiasm and vision for the future is replaced by the urgency and narrowness of the day.