People and Teams

Location, Location, Location – Where Should an EA Team Report?

At the recent Troux Worldwide Conference in Austin I moderated two panels, one on Top Performing EA Teams and the other on EA Leadership. We had many questions submitted by audience members and were unable to answer them all. In the next few weeks Tim and I will be offering our perspectives on some of … Read more

Communication Planning for EA

At the Troux Worldwide Conference in Austin 2 weeks ago, several questions were submitted by participants to my panel that we didn’t have time to get to.  Over the next few weeks, George and I will be addressing them.  One that caught my attention was the following:  “What style of communication have you seen be … Read more

Improving EA Team Performance

With the arrival of the New Year many EA teams are in the final stages of setting their annual objectives. This year, we find that many are being asked to perform at a level significantly higher than last year. They must do so in response to higher expectations placed on them by leaders who believe that EA plays a critical role in moving the enterprise into the future. With people as the critical element to EA success; it only makes sense to invest in team skills and performance.

Enterprise Architects as Change Agents

Becoming an EA cultural change agent isn’t for everyone, but many reluctant practitioners have discovered that they are capable of doing it, once they embrace some of the concepts described here, practice them, and become confident in their abilities.

Social Networking – What’s good for them is good for EA

Enterprise architects have historically struggled with the process of publishing content to the stakeholders in their organization. Surprisingly, EA practitioners as a whole have been reluctant to embrace the use of social networking for their own purposes…

Common Step to Effectiveness – Alignment across EA Community

A common theme that seems to be coming up often lately with clients, prospects and some of the online forums I read is the gaps and overlaps that exist among the many groups involved in the EA function.  As EA becomes more effective, there tend to be more formalized groups created.  It is common for … Read more

Assessing EA Maturity isn’t all that helpful – Here’s a Better Approach

Most current discussions on EA Maturity focus on backward-looking metrics and score them based on levels that are similar to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) process improvement system developed by the Systems Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Over the past several years we have started to develop a different opinion about using CMM-type assessments for enterprise architecture processes.

A Simple Test for Analyzing EA Program Effectiveness

Many EA programs we examine suffer from one problem; they are mired in the details of a few narrow problem spaces and, as a result, are not as broadly focused as they should be.  A simple narrative-based analysis can help EA teams find the right level of detail for their work.  The narrative, while deceptively simple, reveals … Read more