Antwerp, Belgium
One of the most confusing things about architecture is the vagueness of the naming surrounding it. This is true not only for non-architects, who often don’t really know in detail what all the different disciplines do, but also for the architects themselves. A lot of the naming seems to be based on feelings without any clear definition.
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Well, the real title was going to be “Business strategy is like a lizard: It leaves behind its tail while it grows a new one,” but that was just too long.
Strategy never exists in isolation: it’s always a response, a build-up, or a pullback. It also has to be passed down to all the layers of the organization to make these chances. It’s a very reactive business.
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Last week, I discovered a new podcast called The Enterprise Architecture Experience. They had two episodes featuring interviews with Dr. Svyatoslav Kotusev about his books and work. Svyatoslav is a fascinating figure in the Enterprise Architecture space 1, and I was delighted to hear his insights on the podcast. The conversation did not disappoint.
Near the end of the podcast, Svyatoslav made a brief remark about ArchiMate, stating that it is a language spoken only among architects and reinforces the stereotype of the ivory tower architect. His comment resonated with me, and I have been reflecting on it ever since. Allow me to share my thoughts.
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Most big organizations I’ve worked with are more akin to an ecosystem of multiple smaller companies. These smaller companies all share the same umbrella of the bigger total but internally compete for resources and priorities. Think of it as a federation of specialised companies that all share the same banner and want to achieve the same bigger goal.
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A big part of enterprise architecture is keeping your architecture model up to date. Without this model, it’s impossible to do your real job in advising projects, strategy and general company awareness. The problem is that getting a full model is a daunting and maybe even impossible job. Let’s talk about the pitfalls and how we can approach this.
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The last weeks I’ve been focusing a lot on the data and information models in our architecture. Organizations have so much data flowing around that it’s hard to effectively map it all out. That’s a shame because there are some very valuable learnings to be had from that data.
That’s why I wrote this post; it’s mainly to gather my current thoughts on this topic. Might as well share it with you. It’s a combination of techniques I’ve done at previous organizations (things I know work) and things I’ve been thinking about for a long time now (things that might work). So this isn’t a full-on manual, more a collection of current thoughts. I hope that makes sense.
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Have you ever made bread before in your life? Like from start to finish? It’s not a difficult thing to do. You start off with flour, yeast, salt, and water. Combine them, let that dough sit for a while, knead it again, let it sit again, shove it in an oven, and voila: you have a bread.
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I’ve been reading a lot of strategy books these last weeks 1 (also two James Bond books, but that is probably not related to this post), and I’ve been trying to tie it to my everyday work of enterprise architecture.
Most of these posts are just me finding an excuse to put my thoughts to paper to see if they make sense, so why not write a new post about what I’ve learned? It’s also a perfect time, with the end of the year approaching, to maybe reflect on the next year and how we can tackle it.
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I’ve noticed a huge shift in the architecture of big companies in the last few years: companies are shifting from in-house development to third-party applications, shedding the traditional ‘Not Invented Here’ stigma in favor of external innovation.
It is not hard to understand the rationale behind it: you can use the best tools in the market 1 to handle parts of your business, the vendor handles all the technical maintenance, and they even keep improving the software, and most importantly, you don’t need in-house people dedicated to the job.
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And we’ve come to the last post in the series of “communication for team leaders.” This one is about ownership.
You can find the other posts here.
And these posts are based on a part of my talk, “I just became a team lead, now what” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWtSbTded0o).
A smart reader like you has probably found the pattern in these posts; they all have a focus on keeping people engaged and motivated. This is a very important part of leadership. If you can’t motivate your people to stand behind their work, you will never get good results. At best you will get passable work; at worst you will get an open vacancy.
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