Mike The Architect

Review: Elevating Enterprise Architecture

I had the pleasure over the holiday break to take the Elevating Enterprise Architecture course from Architecting the Enterprise. This was a truly refreshing course. I found many of the same themes I have talking about lately are reflected in this course. Namely, enterprise architecture soft skills.

When I ran across this course it really resonated with me. It is a rare breed of EA training. If you follow my blog you will quickly find out that I feel very strongly that the soft skills are the critical success factor to the effectiveness and ultimately success of enterprise architects.  Below you will find more information from my blog where I talk about this more.

Often times when I present or conduct workshops and mention EA soft skills many folks are hungry to learn more about what I am referring to. I really like this course because to date I have been sending people to a set of books and independent courses that are both slightly out of context or unapplied to the unique challenges that EA’s face. This course acts as an accelerant and broad coverage of all those resources into a EA training course. A great example of this is the application of the Kotter’s 8 step framework to EA.

You can find this throughout the course materials. I have found that with some courses it is merely just an aggregation of materials into a training course. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was not the case. This was very much applied to the needs and concerns of EA’s while staying true to the proven methods in the leadership communities.

The course was well thought out and rolled up the essential core EA soft skills:

• Emotional Intelligence
• Change Management
• Leadership
• Communication
• EA Empowerment

Below is a short video from AtE.

 

After sitting in on this course, I would most certainly recommend it to my fellow enterprise architects. The course provide the essential soft skills needed to be a highly successful enterprise architect. I would go so far as to say that it is a prerequisite for aspiring enterprise architects and taken as a refresher course for seasoned enterprise architects.

Comparing this course to other EA Courses I find that most pays soft skills lip service and when it does mention soft skills it is in a very technical manner such as PowerPoint presentation skills. I will iterate again that this is a unique course that provides thorough overview of proven methods in a manner consumable to practicing enterprise architects.

 

More Information from Architecting the Enterprise

• Elevating Enterprise Architecture Course Site - http://www.architecting-the-enterprise.com/enterprise_architecture/articles/enterprise_architecture_professional_development_program_-_soft_skills_for_enterprise_architects.php
• Architecting the Enterprise course overview video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUJ0WArLxvU
• Introduction to Evaluating Course - http://www.architecting-the-enterprise.com/training/presentations/introduction_elevating_ea/

More Information from my Blog

• Presentation: It’s Not About How Smart You Are… - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2012/12/presentation-its-not-about-how-smart-you-are.html
• EQ isn’t enough. Enterprise Architects Must Balance with EQ Driven Approaches - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2011/03/iq-isnt-enough-enterprise-architects-must-balance-with-eq-driven-approaches.html
• It’s not about Complexity, It’s about Simplicity - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2012/02/its-not-about-complexity-its-about-simplicity.html
• What Can Enterprise Architects Learn from Steve Jobs - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2012/02/what-can-enterprise-architects-learn-from-steve-jobs.html

Presentation: It’s Not about How Smart You Are…

Last week I presented about a topic that focuses on improving enterprise architecture effectiveness through our soft skills.  There is a great deal to cover in this area but I wanted to build a primer and get some your thoughts stimulated around the soft skills required to be effective with your customers and partners.

The most common pitfall I see with my interaction with architects is that our communication is dominated by IT centric speak that is illustrated with technical templates, data models, complex frameworks or even fully baked solutions. These are all analytical or IQ centric in nature. In my presentation, I discuss how that is not how people in general think and set the stage for a different way of thinking about how we as EA’s communicate through Emotional Intelligence.

 

EA Effectiveness: It’s not about how much you know but how you use it

EA Effectiveness: It’s not about how much you know but how you use it from Mike Walker

In this presentation I talked about how your IQ will get you the job but your EQ will allow you to keep it. Meaning, even if you’re the smartest architect on the block but you intimidate, alienate or out right make people mad you will not be effective.  I’m sure some of you have seen this in your past but if you need another story about this you can find a really great one in the book, “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”. 

In my presentation, I explore high-level EA soft skills  and offer some insights into our own biology to explain how people think and relate it back to our profession. Over time I will dive into more of these aspects that I am just scratching the surface on now.

Note: There are quite a few images in the presentation that require a voice over. I may address this through a webcast at some point.

If you view my presentation, I would love to hear your feedback on this topic and how you think this would help or impact your architecture success.

 

More Information

• EQ isn’t enough. Enterprise Architects Must Balance with EQ Driven Approaches - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2011/03/iq-isnt-enough-enterprise-architects-must-balance-with-eq-driven-approaches.html
• It’s not about Complexity, It’s about Simplicity - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2012/02/its-not-about-complexity-its-about-simplicity.html
• What Can Enterprise Architects Learn from Steve Jobs - http://www.mikethearchitect.com/2012/02/what-can-enterprise-architects-learn-from-steve-jobs.html

 

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