Chief Architect’s Big Three Secrets for Enterprise Architecture Planning

Chief Architect's Big Three Secrets for Enterprise Architecture Planning

In a previous article, the spotlight fell on three biggest risks the Chief Architect needs to manage before moving onto something less tactical.  Consider now the area of strategic planning and opportunities in your future state landscape.  Three key sources that the chief architect needs to explore are: CEO’s Top Strategic Drivers CIO’s Primary Concerns Enterprise Portfolio Management In fact, the CEO owns, knows, eats and breathes their top three…

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Your IT Architect Career

Your IT Architect Career

It’s been far too long but I’m writing again – you see I’ve been writing a lot since I last wrote and so there are lots of pieces that should be appearing here soon – I’ll just have to figure out where to start. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on the resources available today on IT Architect Careers.  There isn’t much – a handful of books, a…

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Enterprise Architecture Strategy – Do I Need A Strategy to Get One?

Enterprise Architecture Strategy - Do I Need A Strategy to Get One

It’s nearing end of summer and slowly, folks are getting back from vacation or they are out shopping for school supplies.  Maybe a last minute golf game with friends, or perhaps colleagues.  A day at the beach if weather permits.  As we see the first signs of the leaves turn color, we turn to that busy planning month of September. We all get back from the lazy (lazier?) days of…

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A New Day for Great IT Architects

A New Day for Great IT Architects

Monday is as good as any to do something new.  For most, above average.  Well – today I figured I’d **make** the time to move this blog to the Architect Boot Camp site.  Here it is – hope you benefit from it and I do have plans (hopes) to post much more regularly. What’s new?  I’ve been really busy getting the fall  Architect Boot Camp Workshop schedule completed, as well…

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The Enterprise Architect Purpose…

The Enterprise Architect Purpose

  Part 1 of 5 part article… The primary purpose of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to inform, guide, and constrain the decisions for the enterprise, especially those related to IT investments. The true challenge of enterprise engineering is to maintain the architecture as a primary authoritative resource for enterprise IT planning. This goal is not met via enforced policy, but by the value and utility of the information provided…

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Setting the Scope for Enterprise IT Architecture

Setting the Scope for Enterprise IT Architecture

Recently, one of the people I have been coaching in the area of Enterprise Architecture asked me a great question – one worth posting here. He said “what is the scope of the Enterprise Architect?” in context to the head of Application Development, the Lead Analyst or the Solution Architect. I responded within the parameters of Enterprise Architecture at a company. EA provides IT governance and stewardship for any future…

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Quick Wins with Enterprise Architecture Methodology

Quick Wins with Enterprise Architecture Methodology

Happy New Year! It’s nice to be back again and writing about my favorite topic. This spring I’m speaking at the Enterprise Architectures Conference on Quick Wins in Enterprise Architecture so I thought I’d share a bit of the content. Enterprise Architecture as a new program within a company or an organization is difficult to kick off. Often there are so many things that need to get done, that we…

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Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen – Enterprise Architecture Compliance Required

Enterprise Architecture Compliance Required

Does it ever seem that as an Enterprise Architect, we have many dragons to slay? Our organizations confuse the Chief Architect with chief technology problem solver, and it isn’t their fault. Often the current technology hot spot of the day is something that lives in the EA realm, and we are the captain of the ship. We’ve had many metaphors – the Builder, the Architect of a house, the City…

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Enterprise Architecture and Portfolio Management

Enterprise Architecture and Portfolio Management

Ok – so maybe you haven’t heard the buzz about the marriage between EA and Portfolio Management. It’s been going on long enough to get the seven year itch already – so why should I go on about that today? My head hurts – I’ve been knee deep in the weeds building course ware for about three months and I’ve come up for air. It’s probably the first thing I thought of…

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No Crystal Ball for Enterprise Architecture Methodology

No Crystal Ball for Enterprise Architecture Methodology

Do You Have a Crystal Ball: 3 Future State Architecture Keys to Make them Think So! Documenting the current state architecture is a must to any enterprise or system architecture report, and even though we understand this, it’s the future state that everyone is anxious to see and share. Let’s face it – they are also waiting to critique it. There are components of a future architecture that make or…

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Strange Sightings At The Enterprise Architecture Conference

Strange Sightings At The Enterprise Architecture Conference

Boo! Did you survive the EAC? I am almost caught up on my sleep – just a two hour time change plus flight plus daylight savings time and I’ve turned into Rip Van Winkle. I’m sure I’ll be caught up by tomorrow, but still have lots of miscellaneous thoughts swirling around in this head. About 18 months ago, I gave a presentation at a Canadian Information Processing Conference, titled “Enterprise…

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The Main Issue with Enterprise Architecture

The Main Issue with Enterprise Architecture

I spend time weekly trying to think of “shareable” things I’ve done I can put up on the www.architectbootcamp.com to spread the wealth in creating more and better I.T. Architects. I sat down the other day with a napkin and a pen, trying to list all of the issues I’ve heard clients mention or express concern about and thought these would be ideal subjects for blogs or newsletters. Issue Number…

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