Process Optimization Challenges, Part 3: Using Lean
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
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Standards of Security for EA Vendors
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.
Turn the Ship Around – Break Free from the Shackles of the Present
Background
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.
A Leading EA Tool Comes with Extras
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.
The Definitive EA Tool RFP Template
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?
ArchiMate 3.1: The New Version of the Standard
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.
Cloud Migration with the Help of EA
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.
On Layers and Abstraction Levels in the ArchiMate Language
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.
Business Friendly Dashboards
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.
Define and Assess Digital KPIs with Enterprise Architecture
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
An Overview of the Levels of Abstraction in Enterprise Architecture
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
Agile ArchiMate®: Intentional Architecture
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.
EA and Security
How can Enterprise Architecture help your organization become more secure, reliable, and compliant? Read more
EA and BPM
Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management are two change disciplines often closely associated. But how exactly do they relate to one another? Read more
Customer Focus From Start to Finish: Delivering Business Change that Makes a Difference
Having the right focus
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
When “Data-Driven” Is Not Enough
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?”
The 5 Best Pieces of Career Advice for Enterprise Architects
A while back we put out a post meant to give enterprise architects a hand with successfully passing a job interview. In a similar vein, today we’re offering architecture practitioners some great pieces of advice that we’ve come by after consulting with some of the more experienced members of the BiZZdesign team, people who have counseled countless EA practices and successfully carried out a wide range of business change initiatives. Read more
Raise Model Quality – Conformance Checks
ArchiMate provides a powerful language to visually describe the architecture of an enterprise at different layers – from strategy to implementation. Read more
How to Mitigate Risk without Slowing Down Digital Transformation
Cybersecurity is one of the key issues the business world has to deal with, and its importance will only rise. As technology steadily evolves to take over increasingly more aspects of business (and personal) life, the need for security is being made pressingly apparent by incidents such as the breaches at Yahoo and Experian, or the WannaCry ransomware attack. Every year, a huge number of companies are hacked. Here are just some of the most famous cases to give you an idea. The result? Countless people worldwide being affected, with the cost of poor cybersecurity easily running in the millions.
Architecture and Talent: a Path to Fostering the Right Skills and Expertise
Talent is rare
Well, the right talent is, anyway. As new technologies make their way into the marketplace and their adoption becomes generalized, organizations are experiencing a personnel squeeze that poses a risk to both ongoing operations as well future plans. The newer (and more sophisticated) a technology, the scarcer the talent to support it, and ultimately the more difficult it is for an enterprise to ensure it doesn’t miss out in favor of the competition.