Mike Walker's Blog

Recap: Penn State Enterprise Architecture Education & Research Initiative

In this session at the Open Group Conference, Dr. Brian Cameron walked us through Penn State Enterprise Architecture Initiative at the College of ISTEA IST. I have blogged about this program before (Enterprise Architecture Goes To College, EA Becoming Academically Recognized and Offered) where I provide a listing of the other college institutions that offer EA in some form or another.

I learned a few additional interesting facts about the program. Specifically some of the key areas that Dr. Cameron is planning on expanding:

• Launch of online Professional Masters in EA
• Launch of undergraduate focus in EA
• Growth of the research portfolio
• Expansion of the Center for Enterprise Architecture

 

Below is the recap of the session.

 

Overview

The holistic nature of research endeavors aimed at understanding and improving the craft and practice of EA would mean that a number of disciplines will be implicated in defining the problem domain as well as contribute perspectives, approaches and techniques that will be valuable for addressing EA research concerns. Research on EA can benefit from these perspectives contributed by a number of allied disciplines.

• Enterprise Architecture Advisory Board, over seventy organizations from seven countries
• First Advisory Board Meeting conducted September 2009
• Creation of an undergraduate EA degree focus
• Creation of an online Professional Masters Program
• Creation of a professional development portfolio
• Creation of an EA Research Center

 

Dr. Cameron also established the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO) that is an association of professional organizations whose members have an active interest in the practice and professionalism of Enterprise Architecture.

FEAPO provides a forum to facilitate collaboration and coordination of activities of among Enterprise Architecture (EA) related professional organizations, to work toward a better integrated community and “one face”for the advancement of the profession of Enterprise Architecture. The advent of FEAPO has been welcomed the world over because there is a strong desire among practitioners and organizations in many countries to professionalize and advance the field of enterprise architecture.

This group consists of the following members:

• Data Management International
• International Association of Software Architects
• International Council on Systems Engineering
• International Standards Organization (ISO)
• The Association for Enterprise Information
• The Association for Enterprise Architects
• The Association of Business Process Management Professionals International
• The British Computer Society
• The Business Architecture Guild
• The Business Architects Association
• The Center for the Advancement of the EA Profession
• The EA Shared Interest Group from the Industry Advisory Council
• The Integration Consortium
• The Object Management Group
• The Open Group
• The National Association of State CIOs

 

Four Main Areas of the Program

• Undergraduate Education committee
• Defining the competencies that an undergraduate student graduating with a focus in Enterprise Architecture should possess.
• Masters Education committee
• Defining what competencies should be built into the new online Enterprise Architecture Professional Masters Program.
• Professional Development committee
• Defining what type of continuing education offering should be developed in the area of enterprise architecture. Offerings could include certificate programs, executive education, and customized programs for specific organizations.
• Research committee
• Defining what research streams should be developed and enhanced in relation to Enterprise Architecture.
• Helped develop a straw man participation model for the new EA Center.

 

Key Research Areas

1. EA career path development
2. EA framework development and usage
3. EA maturity assessments
4. EA Stakeholder analysis & engagement
5. Understanding EA styles
6. Value measurement frameworks for EA
7. Application of EA to areas outside of IT (e.g.: supply chain)

 

 

Organizations Involved

Alfabet, Germany Applied Research Lab/ Penn State Air Force Research Laboratory Armstrong Process Group Assoc. of Enterprise Architects (AEA) Association for Enterprise Information BAE Systems Inc Bllue Cross Blue Shield Association Boeing Booz Allen Hamilton Business Architecture Guild Center for the Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession (CAEAP) CIGNA Computer Aid Inc. (CAI) Computer Sciences Corporation Cutter Consortium DAGH,LLC Department of Homeland Security Data Management International (DAMA International) Defense Intelligence Agency Deloitte Consulting EMC Corporation Ernst & Young FEMA Forrester Research Gartner GEICO IBM Innoveer Solutions Integration Consortium Iteraplan, Germany International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Johnson & Johnson Kaiser Permanente Kingdee Research Institute, China

LMI Lockheed Martin Mathet Consulting, Inc. Meraka Institute, South Africa NetApp Northrop Grumman Object Management Group (OMG) Oracle PA. State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Pfizer Pinnacle Business Group PNC Financial Services Group PricewaterhouseCoopers Progressive Insurance Raytheon Smartsphere PPM and EAM Solutions State Farm Insurance Company TATA Consultancy Services , India The Confiance Group The Enterprise Architecture Shared Interest Group from the Industry Advisory Council The National Defense University The MITRE Corporation The Open Group TONEX Trout Technologies Unisys Corporation U.S. Department of Defense U.S. Department of Interior U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) U.S. Air Force, Chief, Enterprise Architecture Division, Office of Warfighting Integration and CIO Verizon Telecom -Information Systems Virginia Information Technologies Agency Wipro Technologies

BP Business Architecture Session Recap

Shatender Singh and Madhav Madaboosi, BP Plc., US

Abstract: The Open Group has determined that Business Architecture is a critical input into the decision making for an Enterprise. This presentation will outline BP’s Business Architecture methodology and will also provide a case study. BP’s varied and global business processes required the convergence of siloed business architectures to meet a simplification agenda.

 

I sat in the BP Business Architecture Session Recap this afternoon. While there wasn’t a great level of detail on tangible business architecture concepts, approaches, models and tools I didn't find there was some useful nuggets for organizations to think about when trying to build a business driven EA organization. This session turned out to be more of a case study / reflection of the BP organization.

 

BP started this journey as a result of a business led change or mandate for IT to support a transformation strategy. BP architects made two smart decisions as a result:

• Leverage an existing standard – TOGAF
• Once a method was chosen BP chose to put a heavy emphasis on business architecture approaches with a flavor of portfolio management

Their Approach includes:

• TOGAF adoption
• Enterprise Activity Model
• Strategic directions of the business unit
• Architecture vision and principles
• Benchmarking
• Long tern business requirements
• All projects go through the same governance model to align to the business direction
• Harmonized the same data model across the company
• Segmented portfolio by flagging solutions as strategic
• Leverages principles from TOGAF heavily
• Design based on principles

 

As a result they produce:

• Non strategic requirements
• Process maps
• Rethink the inflight projects and align them to the short term and long term business roadmap
• This in turn influenced the overall architecture views such as information, application and technology aspects.

 

Steps for alignment

• EAM Alignment
• Common Processes
• Data
• Application / Technical

 

Lessons learned from BP

1. Balancing geographic and localized requirements – This was very difficult with the geographies alone but when you add legacy software with constraints and specialized information.
2. Make architecture community driven and introduce social
3. Process alignment is important for other dependencies to work
4. Design authority over deployed assets is a critical element of the overall strategy
5. TOGAF helps structure the evolution of the target architecture

Open Group Conference San Francisco Day 1 Keynotes

Day 1 of the Open Group Conference was kicked off with a bang. Jeanne Ross, whom I refer to as our EA Rock Star started the day with some fresh thinking about how we approach EA.

For al the presentations we had a set of key themes:

• Pragmatic and realistic approaches
• Business centric
• Value focused

 

What a great set of speakers!

 

The Enterprise Architect: Architecting Business Success

Jeanne W. Ross, Director & Principal Research Scientist, MIT Center for Information Systems Research

Session: Enterprise architecture has typically been the domain of IT groups, but the impact of enterprise architecture is felt enterprise-wide. Research at MIT Center for Information Systems Research has shown that adoption of enterprise architecture leads to greater efficiencies and business agility But how can enterprise architects work with senior leaders to envision and lead successful business transformations. This talk describes how enterprise architecture has contributed to the success of firms like Campbell Soup, Southwest Airlines, and USAA. We’ll also discuss how enterprise architects have helped lead the way.

Highlights

• The days of Enterprise Architects trying communicate it’s value is over. EA has been widely accepted
• However, now we need to pull it off the promise of EA
• We have to make sure we don’t blow it and deliver on our promise
• The traditional IT Architecture method of Plan, Build, Operate is broken because it doesn’t allow organization to capitalize on their own capabilities.
• A new model is needed, a business value cycle, NOT a value chain
• Architects must consider reality in their value

 

 A New Model is Needed

Below is the Exploit, Commit, Build, Run model that is adapted from Jeanne Ross’s presentation. 

 

This model is a change of thinking and how we operate as Enterprise Architects. The goal of this model is to facilitate the shift of focus to capability thinking. The challenges highlighted were:

• Company capabilities are under utilized
• Company capabilities are often overlooked
• EA is not always business value driven
• New capabilities developed

 

Start with Exploit to direct us. Exploit doesn’t eliminate planning but makes it more effective.

 

Companies are doing similar things today and referenced in the presentation:

• Aetna
• Protection 1
• USAA
• Pepsi
• Commonwealth of Australia

 

How does this change?

• Information is key.
• Get it in the hands of the everyone.

 

USAA was used as an example of a company that has embraced this:

• Shifted their products around life events for their customers
• Enterprise strategy was put outside IT
• EA’s shift to advisors to the business

 

The role of EA’s in business value is to:

• Help senior execs clarify their business goals. EA’s should provide strategy to CIO’s as an advisory services.
• Identify architectural capability that can be readily exploited
• Present options and their implications for business goals
• Build capabilities incrementally

 

How Enterprise Architecture is Helping NISSAN IT Transformation

Celso Guiotoko, Corporate Vice President and CIO, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

In 2005, Nissan Global IS Dev developed "BEST" as an IT mid-term plan which significantly improved the efficiency of its information systems. This was followed in 2009 with the development of the "Change" program, which provided the basis for further advances by changing "people", "technology" and "process". And, in 2011, the next IT mid-term plan "VITESSE" was launched, designed to bring direct profit in the company by IT Dev.

Nissan focused on a core set or principles. They have some really good ones.

Nissan Principles

1. Business Value
2. Information is an asset
3. Reduce complexity
4. Independent from physical
5. Business driven
6. Change
7. Reuse
8. Competitive advantage
9. Best Practice

 

A program they established to make the transformation is called the BEST program. 

 

BEST Program Elements

• Business Alignment
• Enterprise Architecture
• Selective sourcing
• Technology Simplification

 

Some of the tools used by Nissan to deliver on BEST are:

• Business Process Reference Model
• Business Process is defined use
• Information Architecture – Entity modeling and
• Linking business architecture to information architecture
• Information data map
• Platform rationalization model

 

Business Process Reference Model

 

As a result of these EA efforts Nissan has a :

• Reduced cost per user from 1.09 to .63
• 230k return with 404 applications reduced
• The solution deployment time has been improved
• Significantly reduced hardware costs

 

 

The Transformed Enterprise

Andy Mulholland, Global Chief Technology Officer, Capgemini

If it is different to the well understood enterprise of today with its enterprise IT model what is different and why is it an advantage? These are basic questions which need to be addressed, and understood, before attempting to consider how business processes and resulting technology architectures will need to change.

Andy Mulholland author of three books since 2005 defining using the Web for business, changing to a collaborative working model and using clouds for enterprise business uses his experience to bring a cohesive answer to the questions

 

Highlights

• Inside Out vs. Outside In
• IT is Inside Out, focusing on the activities and problems within the 4 walls of the company wheras the business looks at problems Outside In.
• Two very different models
• The assertion is that we need to understand both of these forces
• The Outside In focus must be given a great deal more thought
• Conway's Law - Enterprises cannot change beyond the constraints of their communications
• Recommendation by Andy- "Seizing the Whitespace" by Johnson - for business model innovation
• Andy highlights the Gartner Nexus model of Cloud, Social, Information and Mobile as the transformation catalyst
• Social networks work better in fast environs to share knowledge efficiently than email
• Cloud forces down a transformation path
• TOGAF has to accept a new way of exposing value from the traditional inside out to a  TOGAF focused on a Outside In model

 

The Transformed Enterprise

 

 

Making Business Drive IT Transformation Through Enterprise Architecture

Lauren C. States, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Computing and Growth Initiatives, IBM Corp

Todays business demands and pressures have accelerated the pace of change. This focus on growing the business, entering new markets, enabling new, faster, better and less expensive services to customers creates challenges. While enterprise systems that may address these challenges are emerging:

• How is an enterprise to choose which IT systems to utilize?
• What strategies should they employ for short-term realization and longer term value of IT investments?
• How does the CIO ensure that business and IT infrastructures cohesively evolve while keeping pace with economic challenges and associated uncertain business implications

 

The Reality of the Forces on IT

1. Customer – Unlimited real-time access to ever changing information and expertise
2. Partners – Acting as an extension of the enterprise
3. Employees– Engaging externally in ways that are outside the traditional scope of work
4. Competitors – Entering new spaces quickly

 

Highlights

• We are the beginning of the next major shift
• IBM has reduced their application portfolio by 2/3 with cloud transformation
• Technology is changing the way the CMO is doing there job. Most are not ready because they go through a noisy set of data and a lose of control over brand
• Highlights the CIO survey http://www-935.ibm.com/services/c-suite/cio/study.html

 

IBM’s Cloud Transformation Model

 

Macro method used by IBM

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture,Open Group Conference,Open Group

Come see me present Why EA’s Must Drive Cloud Strategy and Planning at the Open Group Conference

For those that are attending the Open Group conference in San Francisco here in the next few weeks from now I wanted to let you know that I will be presenting. My presentation is within the Cloud Strategy and SOA Governance track entitled “Why EA’s Must Drive Cloud Strategy and Planning” .

If this is a topic of interest to you or your organization, please stop by. It would  be great to see you there and answer any questions you may have.

Additionally, if you are at the conference or in the San Francisco area and would like to get together please let me know.

 

More

• My Session and Others: http://www3.opengroup.org/events/timetable/628
• Conference Home Page: http://www3.opengroup.org/sanfrancisco2012 

 

Technorati Tags: Cloud,Strategy,Enterprise Architecture,EA,TOGAF,Open Group Conference,Open Group

Webinar: Describe your Business Architecture Using The Open Group Framework (TOGAF) in Government Enterprise Architecture

Today Architecting the Enterprise notified TOGAF community that their Chief Architect, John Polgreen, Ph. D will present on a very interesting topic of TOGAF alignment to business architecture. The webinar is entitled, “Describe your Business Architecture Using The Open Group Framework (TOGAF) in Government Enterprise Architecture” and will be hosted on January 24, 2011 at 8:30 PST.

Webinar Abstract

Once government enterprise architects accurately describe the business architecture of their agency, they then proceed to describe the technical architecture: namely the sum of the applications, data and technology (infrastructure) architectures. US Federal enterprise architectural guidance, including that found in FEA and FSAM, offers high level advice on methodology for describing technical architectures. TOGAF 9 offers highly detailed process guidance which maps closely to FEA/FSAM. The webinar will describe this mapping and show examples of artifacts that can be created using FEA/FSAM in concert with TOGAF.

Panelists will present case studies.

Participants will learn:

• How the technical architecture (applications, data and technology) depend on an understanding of the business architecture of an agency
• How the detailed guidance of TOGAF 9 maps to FEA, FSAM and other US civilian enterprise architecture guidance for describing technical architectures
• What TOGAF artifacts (catalogs, matrices and diagrams) can be useful in describing technical architectures
  

When: January 24, 2011
Time: 11:30 - 12:30 Eastern
Presenter: John Polgreen, Ph. D. (Chief Architect, Architecting the Enterprise)

Register

 

Technorati Tags: Open Group,TOGAF,Business Architecture,FEA,FSAM,FEAF,EA,Enterprise Architecture

Best Practices in Enterprise and Applications Architecture

For those interested in a free webcast from Gartner on EA best practices here are the details:

Hosted by: Betsy Burton (VP Distinguished Analyst) and Daniel Sholler (Research VP)

Those who have cracked the code on enterprise and application architecture today have programs that are performing well and delivering recognized value to the business. Others are recovering from costly mistakes. This presentation describes best practices of the high-performing teams and lessons learned by others.

Please join VP and Distinguished Analyst Betsy Burton and Research VP Daniel Sholler as they discuss the best practices of enterprise and application architecture in today's economy.

 

What You Will Learn

• What are the best practices of enterprise and application architecture?
• What benefits do organizations see when they consistently apply these best practices?
• How can you avoid the pitfalls?

Direct Event Link

http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=webinar-rss&resId=1503420&nicam=SocMedia&nichn=Twitter&niseg=webinar122810

 

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture,Gartner,Best Practices,Guidance,EA

Microsoft PDC Videos

Yes, there is a way to see all of the content, and that’s by visiting http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos. This page has instructions on how to download all of the videos, so that you can watch them whenever/wherever/offline or not. You can always watch them via Silverlight while online, but a traveler can always use a high quality copy. 

My SharePoint Conference Schedule

Hello everyone. I thought I would share with you my conference schedule. There are some overlap areas just in case I want to hop to another session. 

Monday, October 19th 9:00 AM Keynote: Unveiling Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Mandalay Bay BallroomSpeaker: Steve Ballmer 10:30 AM Keynote: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Drilldown Mandalay Bay BallroomSpeaker: Jeff Teper 1:15 PM SharePoint 2010 Overview and Whats New Mandalay Bay FSpeaker: Arpan Shah 2:45 PM Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Development Tools Overview South Seas BSpeaker: Mike Morton 2:45 PM Overview of Visio Services 2010 South Pacific FSpeaker: Philippe-Joseph Arida, Suneet Shah 4:30 PM Web Content Management in SharePoint 2010 Islander ISpeaker: Jim Masson, Tyler Butler 4:30 PM Project Server 2010 Overview Lagoon JSpeaker: Christophe Fiessinger Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 9:00 AM Redefining Your Application Platform With SharePoint Composites Lagoon HSpeaker: J.R. Arredondo 10:30 AM Scaling SharePoint 2010 topologies for your organization Mandalay Bay FSpeaker: Simon Skaria, Umesh Unnikrishnan 1:15 PM Authentication and Authorization in SharePoint 2010 South Seas BSpeaker: Venky Veeraraghavan 1:15 PM Forrester: So You Want To Develop Apps Using SharePoint ... Breakers BSpeaker: John Rymer 2:45 PM Forrester: Mapping Out Your Organization’s Road to SharePoint Success Lagoon HSpeaker: Rob Koplowitz 4:30 PM Securing SharePoint 2010 for Internet Deployments Lagoon HSpeaker: Chris Gideon, Luca Bandinelli Wednesday, October 21th, 2009 9:00 AM SharePoint 2010 Governance: Planning and Implementation Mandalay Bay GSpeaker: Scott Jamison, Susan Hanley 10:30 AM Designing Capabilities, not Applications with SharePoint Composites... Mandalay Bay HSpeaker: Michael Yeager 1:15 PM Building an enterprise knowledge management solution on SharePoint... Mandalay Bay HSpeaker: Lincoln Demaris, Sean Squires 2:45 PM Building Business Applications using Business Connectivity Services... Mandalay Bay HSpeaker: Brad Stevenson, Rolando Jimenez Salgado 4:30 PM Building high scale, high availabilty websites on SharePoint 2010 Mandalay Bay GSpeaker: Ben Robb Thursday, October 22th, 2009 9:00 AM SharePoint 2010 Online Dedicated, Why Get Dedicated! Mandalay Bay JSpeaker: Charles Ofori, Scott St. Jean 10:30 AM Architecture guidance for building applications in SharePoint 2010 ReefSpeaker: Mike Ammerlaan 12:00 PM Authentication Scenarios for Business Connectivity Services Mandalay Bay HSpeaker: Mohammed Nazeeruddin

Heading to the SharePoint 2009 Conference

I was fortunate enough to get some last minute tickets for the SharePoint 2009 Conference next week. This is a big one for Microsoft. I am excited to see if there are any surprises and get the details on all the new enhancements. 

It will be really strange for me since this is my first Microsoft conference that I will not be speaking at. I suppose all those Microsoft blue shirts will have to collect dust in my closet...

If anyone else is going and would like to get together let me know!

Microsoft Architect Insight Conference 2009

Did you know about the fourth annual Microsoft Architect Insight Conference will be taking place on the 8th May 2009 at Microsoft, London.

Check out all the details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/architecture/dd135209.aspx

The format of the Architect Insight Conference in 2009 has changed to reflect the challenging business environment that many companies are experiencing, but is still focused on arming IT Architects with the knowledge and tools needed to succeed.

As well as compelling speaker presentations from companies such as Easy Jet, Astra Zeneca and Equinti there will be numerous opportunities during the conference for you to get up close and personal with Microsoft and its partners in the form of round table sessions.

Each round table will be based on a specific topic and led by a subject expert, it is your opportunity to ask questions, comment and feedback in an informal small group setting. Details of the timings and headlining topics for the round table sessions will be detailed closer to the conference.

As in previous years the AIC will focus on current and emerging trends in the field of IT Architecture including:-

• Enterprise Architecture: focusing on cost reduction, improved agility and responsiveness to the business.
• Solution Architecture: focusing on the changing architecture of the client, from thick to thin to rich to smart.
• Infrastructure Architecture: focusing on the infrastructure tools and technologies of the server and data centre.

Places for the AIC are limited and can be reserved for £99 + VAT - please click here to register and reserve your place at the Conference.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture