Evolving EA

EOA = Ecology Oriented Architecture
OOA = Outcome Oriented Architecture (Managed Level)
VOA = Value Oriented Architecture
SOA = Service Oriented Architecture
COA = Component Oriented Architecture
OOA = Object Oriented Architecture (Initial/Repeatable Level)
FOA = Functions Oriented Architecture
DOA = Data Oriented Architecture

The Great Master Lea was sitting on his mountain top basking in the sun. Earlier this morning a middle aged sea turtle and an old woman had come before him to ask a question. This is what they asked: “Oh great master Lea, how can we be certain that we have quality in our work?” The great master Lea looked at the middle aged sea turtle and the old woman then turned his head towards the sky and said: “It is not about having quality or not; it’s about matching the right quality with the right customer”

The Great Master Lea was sitting on his mountain top basking in the sun. Earlier this morning an old monkey and a young woman had come before him to ask a question. This is what they asked: “Oh great master Lea, how do we know if we are lean or not?” The great master Lea looked at the monkey and the woman then turned his head towards the sky and said: “It is not about being lean or not. Anyone can be lean; the trick is to know when one is lean enough”

The Great Master Lea was sitting on his mountain top basking in the sun. Earlier this morning an old man and a young woman had come before him to ask a question. This is what they asked: “Oh great master Lea, how do we know if we are on the true path to becoming service oriented?” The great master Lea looked at the man and the woman then turned his head towards the sky and said: “Go visit your projects and ask them if they are building business processes or applications”

 The Open Group’s SOA Source Book is a collection of source material for use by enterprise architects working with Service-Oriented Architecture.

Read more at: http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-book/

I’ve been thinking about the articles I’d like to read if there where an Enterprise architecture magazine on the stands. Maybe this will inspire some to write some good articles, maybe it will inspire me to write a post or two. Whatever, here is the outline as I envision it.

Section: Editors dialogue

In this section the chief editor writes on the main theme of the issue.

Title: The time race

Outline:In a world where the business spins its magic ever faster to attract the customers, the enterprise architects wield the tool of visual business models…

Section: Contributors

In this section the correspondence with the magazine is published

Section: Tidbits

In this section there would be two main themes alternating to reflect the main subject of each issue. The main themes would be: Breaking bad habits and Celebrating best practice.

Title: Breaking bad habits

Outline: 5 mistakes and how to fix them. Numbers on bad habits, a show of the most recent poll stats. A couple of small statements to provoke thinking.

Section: Business

In this section we would collect the latest business related news.

What happens in the business world of EA. Mergers and acquisitions. Layoffs and trade-offs. The major players corner. Financial.

Title: How to add value without increasing expenses

Outline: What can your team do to add value to your customers without increasing expenses?

Section: Technology

In this section there would be tests, presentations and commentary on the technology that supports working with, communicating on and creating enterprise architecture.

Title: From blueprints to dashboards, the new era of enterprise architecture tools has started.

Outline: Even more than before the tools supporting enterprise architecture are called upon to be enterprise centric. It used to be that the tools where used by no more than a handful experts. Now the tools are diverging into specialized areas like modelling, presentation, measuring, collecting, integrating and managing to name but a few…

Section: Profession

This section would support the profession of enterprise architects and work towards establishing some kind of baseline on what enterprise architects do. It would bring about the culture, sub-culture and pop-culture of enterprise architecture. It would celebrate at least one hero of enterprise architecture and possibly one team in a subsection named Standing ovations.

Title: Thinking up-side down

Outline:In the land of down-under enterprise architects think the other way round. When the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere divide the problem space they…

In an article in Computer Sweden today, Ivar Jacobson the father of use-case wrote about being smart. In conclusion he wrote that “you don’t have to repeat the mistakes of others”.

I gave it some thought and of course you should try not to repeat the mistakes of others, but inevitably you’ll make some mistakes that others has made before you. The biggest problem in todays IT-driven business isn’t that we occasionally repeat others mistakes, it’s that we continue to upgrade the mistakes we are faced with. Thus creating one of two problems, either a highly complex environment or a monolithic inflexible structure. Worse we could create a highly complex monolithic structure. Remember that the mistakes we are faced with, might be the success of yesterdays heroes (the boss of today). So tread carefully on the marshland of change, but be swift when the sponsor is in and make the move without remorse.

Do you have samples of where the pattern of continuously upgrading mistakes has been at play, then comment this so we can learn.

Myself I’ve seen several such mistakes. One that comes to mind is an organization that installed a portal software as an organizational wide intranet. They where never able to capitalize on the capabilities of the software, mainly because lack of interest from division managers. They have decided to upgrade the software to the next generation, an even more complex product. Of course they will fail once again, since it is the same staff and the same managers, thinking the same thoughts. This is a perfect example of “continuously upgrading mistakes”.

Thank you Ivar for the spark of thought gave me on this Friday morning, now I’ll go and tear down the ceiling in my living room.

This is just to announce the first in a collection of snippets that I’ll post. All of the snippets will be posted under the same title “The art of architecture #”, they will all be used in a book project about the art of architecture in the enterprise arena.

If you feel like contributing to this project please feel free to comment and or mail me directly with ideas, snippets, thoughts. If you have a company or organization that wish to participate in this I’ll be happy to discuss most matters in person or via any media channel.

I’ve been actively pursuing what I’d like to see in an offering related to the practice of enterprise architecture. Below is a fictive offering made to the community and all other stakeholders in EA, about a great service that would cater to most of the common needs.

• What if I exposed a service to you that gave you the ability to maintain all of your EA artifacts on any meta model you like
• What if the service could visualize all the relations and even some things you haven’t thought of yet
• What if this service came with ready made samples and explanations for most concepts in EA space
• What if the service I exposed was a true in the cloud application
• What if this service was localized for your usage
• What if this service could build upon your present material by importing, converting and exporting
• What if the service I exposed was more secure to use than your present service
• What if you and your users could have a say in how the user experience of this service would feel like
• What if this service had all the features of social computing and they where built in from start
• What if this service had awesome search built in to it
• What if this service had an open API attached to it
• What if the service I exposed guaranteed a drop in EA tools licensing cost with more than 90%
• What if this service was globally available
• What if the support for this service was better than what you get at your mommas house
• What if I could guarantee delivery of all this by 2009-12-31

Would you buy in to it?