The architectures of large organizations can become quite large and complicated, posing a challenge for the architects developing and maintaining them. In previous discussions, we have addressed a number of techniques for organizing and controlling such large models to keep things manageable. In this installment, we look at the processes and practices you can use to optimize the collaboration between the people working on these architectures.
In the first blog of this series, I explained how important it is to raise your digital change capability to become an adaptive enterprise. I also highlighted the role of effective communication, as well as approaches to categorize and visualize enterprise architecture descriptions based on the TOGAF and ArchiMate standards. In this series, I also included guidance on which approach to select for modeling Architecture and Solution Building Blocks (both are types of logical or physical components). To round out this series, I will end by discussing the connection to Deployed Solutions.
In the previous installment of this architecture organization series, I wrote about organizing your model repository according to business, information and technology domains. I also explained the need to create separate current- and future-state models, and the separation between and model content and views. In this part of the series, I have a few more things to add on the topic of naming and modeling conventions, as well as advice on how to set up governance and quality assurance structure around your models.
Previously, I have written about the use of a modeling language and the practical usage of the TOGAF Enterprise Continuum to classify architectural descriptions along different levels of abstraction. In this blog, I’m going to demonstrate how the content of these descriptions can be visualized with a standard notation. While TOGAF 9.1 provides the standard architecture development method (ADM), ArchiMate is the worldwide standard to model and visualize the content of enterprise architectures. Both are a public standard of The Open Group.
If you have some experience in modeling real-life, full-size architectures for large-scale organizations – preferably in the ArchiMate language, of course – you have likely come across the challenge of organizing your models in logical and manageable ways. In this two-part series, we’re going to share our top 6 ways to organize your architecture models. These six methods should help you keep your models neat and tidy while also supporting better outcomes for your strategic initiatives.
In a previous blog on cybersecurity, I wrote about the essential steps to keep your organization safe in an increasingly dangerous digital environment:
Previously, I wrote about the need to digitize change capabilities and how enterprise architecture can support and provide value to your organization. I also discussed how to categorize architecture descriptions along different levels of abstraction. But there is one dimension I didn’t dive into: How generic or specific is the architecture description compared to your organization?
Over the past decade, reference architectures have been developed and many have been published. They are a very useful start describing an enterprise, and the architectures are more or less specific to our enterprise. I don’t want to lose myself in academic discussions about what should be classified as what, so I will focus on the big points of the idea behind. Read more
A survey conducted by The Open Group in cooperation with BiZZdesign and other partners found that the largest difficulty in strategy process (for over half of the 500+ respondents) is bridging the gap between strategy development and implementation.
In recent years, the concept of ‘value stream’ has become increasingly popular. It is a useful element in the toolbox of business architects, and is advocated in, for example, the Open Group Guide to Value Streams and the BIZBOK® from the Business Architecture Guild®. Though ArchiMate® has had a value mapping element since its inception, until now it does not have a value stream element. In this blog we propose to add a value stream element to ArchiMate in a way that supports approaches such as those described in the Value Stream Guide and the BIZBOK, is coherent with the language structure, and minimizes the impact on the rest of the language.
In the final installment of this blog series, I want to address the domain of risk, security and compliance, an area of increasing importance for architects, process designers and others. As an example, in some previous blogs, I have already outlined the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its impact. In one of my posts, I used a simple example of data classification and how you can use this to assess your application landscape. Read more
I am very excited to announce the new version of Enterprise Studio and an all new Web Portal. This release includes many new capabilities making our software suite more powerful than ever. Next to our excellent modeling, repository and analysis capabilities (top in the market according to Gartner*), our software suite now includes a state-of-the-art Portal. The visualization, analysis and collaboration capabilities enable a much wider range of stakeholders to gain insights across the enterprise, covering a broad range of transformation stakeholders. We proudly name our Portal HoriZZon. Read more
In my previous post, I discussed how you can analyze the business and technical value of your applications, and how architecture models are key in calculating metrics such as the business criticality or strategic value of applications. In this post, I want to focus on financial analyses, and in particular on cost models.
In the previous installment in this blog series, we looked into planning and analyzing change in the enterprise by linking the life cycles of elements such as applications and projects. But how do you decide what to do with, for example, your application landscape? Which applications need to be improved, re-platformed, functionally upgraded, or phased out?
Next to this analysis of the enterprise as it is today, addressed in the previous blog posts, we can also plan, design and analyze change in and of the enterprise. To this end, you can give anything in your architecture model a lifecycle. The specific stages in those lifecycles can be defined depending on the types of objects you model. Read more
In my two previous blog posts, I described dependency analysis and impact analysis. These two kinds of analysis focus on what you might call the steady state of your enterprise, or the enterprise at rest. But there is also the enterprise in motion, where we look at the behavior of the enterprise, in particular its business processes.
In my previous blog post, I outlined the value of using analysis techniques to get more business value out of your models. I described one of the most common analysis techniques, impact analysis, and showed how color views and heat maps can be used to depict, for example, the use of applications to support capabilities.
Strategists, architects, process experts, software developers, data managers and other professionals involved in changing the enterprise often put substantial effort in creating all kinds of useful models of their designs. In many cases, such business models, enterprise architecture models, business process models, software models, data models and more are only used to specify some design, i.e., to describe what should be built. But there is much more value to be had from these models, by using powerful analysis techniques to create new insights. Read more
Organizations involved in major strategic changes such as mergers, acquisitions and divestitures often focus mostly on the financial and market aspects of the change. What is the impact on your market share? How can you increase buying power from your suppliers? What cost savings can be realized by exploiting synergies? Read more
In my previous blog post, I described the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will go into effect in May 2018, and I outlined its profound effects on organizations, not just in Europe but around the globe. This regulation, and related EU Directives such as the ePrivacy Directive and the Network and Information System Security (NIS) Directive, force organizations to rethink how they deal with personal, privacy-sensitive data. In this blog, I want to address the steps you can take as an architect to help your organization comply with these regulations.
When I give a presentation to a technical audience showing any kind of picture with an arrow in it (not necessarily an ArchiMate diagram), more often than not, someone will raise their hand and ask: “What does that arrow mean?” When I answer, they will follow up with “Shouldn’t it be the other way round?” Read more
