Blog
Recently, the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) published version 8.0 of its financial industry reference architecture (https://bian.org/servicelandscape-8-0/). This provides a comprehensive model of the business capabilities, business scenarios, service domains and business objects used in banking and other financial services. Read more
My colleagues Marc and Matthijs recently finished a series on innovation, which made me think of the importance of being forward-facing in today’s marketplace but also of the fact that many organizations suffer on that front. Their premise was that enterprise architects can help businesses overcome this problem, given their strategic positioning within the enterprise and the valuable insights they can deliver decision makers – I recommend you read it.
In the past, I have written extensively on the combination of enterprise architecture and agile development, most recently about the notion of intentional architecture. It is clear that for any organization or system of some size, a solid architecture practice is needed next to agile ways of working.
Welcome to the last installment in this series. Today we’re taking a look at using Lean techniques as part of a process optimization initiative. Read more
We’ve spoken about security on this blog before. We addressed how you can build a better protected organization with the help of enterprise architecture, for instance, and also collated our thoughts on improving cybersecurity with EA in a whitepaper (have a read if you haven’t already). That’s because we are genuinely preoccupied with the topic and we make it our business to not only adhere to high security standards ourselves, but also create awareness within our industry around this important subject.
Across the globe, Enterprise Architecture teams deliver three key organizational functions. Firstly, they provide understanding of their current organization; this enables the organization to effectively control and regulate its existing operating model. Secondly, those teams provide a window into the organization’s potential, insight into where value can be found and unlocked, and an insight into the future. Thirdly, EA teams drive, enable and support the iterative improvement of this direction setting insight, and with that they translate strategy into reality, creating real business value.
The recent release of the annual Gartner MQ Report for Enterprise Architecture Tools provided all of us here at BiZZdesign with a very pleasant piece of news. For the fourth year in a row we were acknowledged as a Leader, and for the second time the vendor with the highest Ability to Execute score.
A Request for Proposal (or Request for Information) is a critical stage in any business transformation process. With the need to procure a professional tool onto which to anchor the enterprise architecture practice clearly identified, the next step is just as important – but not so straightforward. It is at this junction point that one must ask themselves – How do we identify the best offer out there? What should/shouldn’t we prioritize? And is it possible to make it more difficult for ourselves, or perhaps even endanger the transformation initiative through our own fault?
At the Open Group conference in Amsterdam in November 2019, the latest version of the ArchiMate modeling language for enterprise architecture was released. Version 3.1 is an update to the previous major version 3.0 (released in 2016). Despite being ‘just’ a minor version update, it holds a number of useful additions and improvements for EA practitioners.
A great many organizations have migrated their workloads (databases, back office systems, web applications etc.) to the cloud over the last decade or so. A great many more have still to do so, either because they’re dealing with industry-specific regulatory requirements or, more likely, because of the disruption this change would cause. In any case, the benefits of a cloud migration are well-known at this point, so we won’t waste time talking about those.
Our recent blog post on abstraction levels in architecture models resulted in a lively discussion on LinkedIn. As part of that discussion, the notion of layering was questioned, and in particular the layers that are built into the ArchiMate language. In this post I want to clarify the thinking behind the language structure.
One of the biggest challenges in making Enterprise Architecture successful is ensuring proper communication with business stakeholders. Enterprise Architecture is quite often perceived as a discipline of the IT organization (where unfortunately also many EA teams are operating), and the traditional EA diagrams are not always the best visualizations for business stakeholders. To create better alignment with the business organization, it is important to create business-friendly visualizations, both from format and content perspective. This will help in improving the maturity of your EA practice and establish it as an enabler of strategic decision making and continuous change.
Digital transformation initiatives are relatively commonplace these days. That’s because there is a pretty wide understanding that you can’t really keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect to be successful in the long run – not with technology advancing so quickly, consumers being so demanding, and a rapidly falling barrier to entry. That much organizations have internalized. Read more
Organizations today are faced with an ever-increasing speed of change. To enable faster transformation, they implement agile methods, which impact the whole enterprise. Obviously, change need to be communicated, but one cannot document all the details because otherwise they would be outdated the next week, or perhaps the very next day. Read more
In my previous blog post on using the ArchiMate modeling language together with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), I briefly mentioned the need for modeling the intent of the enterprise. In an agile context, this notion of intent and intentional architecture is quite important. In this blog, I want to explore that further.
How can Enterprise Architecture help your organization become more secure, reliable, and compliant? Read more
Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management are two change disciplines often closely associated. But how exactly do they relate to one another? Read more
The customer is the most important variable in the equation of success. Please them and you’ll do well; ignore their needs and desires, especially in this age of speed and lower emotional attachment, and you invariably go out of business. Read more
An enterprise architect friend of mine recently posed an interesting question: “I lead a relatively mature EA practice that delivers good value to our organization. We are digitally transforming the organization and adopting agile ways of working across the enterprise, which is improving our outcomes for individual initiatives. But I am worried these efforts are sometimes wasted on delivering capabilities managers tell us are important, rather than the ones that are truly game-changing. How do I get in front of this, and help lead us to the right strategic outcomes?”