Category Archives: Topic 4 – Technology infrastructure architecture

Let’s Get Technical

The technology architecture is one of the most important aspects for today’s businesses. Having a sound technology architecture is what aligns technology and business goals. Besides old school mom and pop shops, I want to believe that every business is incorporated with some type of technology. Therefore, I think enterprise architects can be a potential asset to any business. In Bruce Roberston’s Gartner article, Five Best Practices for Enterprise Technology, he discusses some of the most important best practices for EA teams. The main premise of the article is that having a focus on process and communication will increase improvements across any organization. I’ve heard of all of these best practices in some capacity through out my graduate career but I found the below to be the most interesting.

Get involved in projects early and often – Even though the concept is a given, I like how Bruce addressed assigning three touch points for the enterprise architecture team in any given project. By having three specific ways in which the team can be involved, hopefully it will strengthen the connection between the EA team and the organization. I can imagine it would be difficult to implement  this into an organization that doesn’t currently have it but having the EA team kind of force its way into the solution life cycle will create opportunities for communication, guidance, and consultation in order to create some standardization.

Source:

Robertson, B. (2009, January 29). Five Best Practices for Enterprise Technology Architecture. Retrieved October 05, 2017, from https://www.gartner.com/doc/869120/best-practices-enterprise-technology-architecture

Word of the Day: Versatilists 

If I’m being honest, I’ve actually never heard of the term Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) Leader before. I’m thinking that I’ve had to have heard of the role but under a different name. Either way, I like it. In Jay E. Pultz and Ed Holub’s article, The Future of the Infrastructure and Operations Leader, they touch on nine key characteristics that are needed in I&O management. First and foremost, I like how the I&O leader is positioned as a “strong No.2” to the CIO. Besides that, I found the below characteristics to be rather interesting.

Roles – I like the idea of versatilists. I would like to think that I am striving to be one myself. Moving from specialists to versatilists will help the business to be even more well rounded. Sometimes having more of a broad knowledge of different disciplines can help with taking on different roles when they arrive within the business.

Relationship to the Business – I’ve definitely been witness to how a business runs when it is positioned to be reactive versus proactive. This might not fully relate, but at my first job out of college, almost every year the certificates for our geo-targeting would expire causing the business to halt for at least two or three days at a time. The business was reactive in that this pause in operations happened around the same time every single year. Instead of being proactive and setting a reminder to address this certificate renewal before it expires each year, there was a halt in the business every single year. Once there is a realization that the business and IT rely on each other then they can be fully integrated.

Source:

Pultz, Jay E., and Ed Holub. “The Future of the Infrastructure and Operations Leader.” Technology Research, Gartner, Inc., 25 May 2010, www.gartner.com/doc/1375035/future-infrastructure-operations-leader.

Agile, a killer of the Architect

Throughout all of the courses I’ve taken so far in EA, I always wondered how EA would fit into companies who are looking to be more lean and more agile. It seems that one of the main deterrents that companies have in determining if they should implement an enterprise architecture, is that to fully implement it would take a ton of time and a ton of money. Therefore the need to be agile can sometimes outweigh the need for implementing an enterprise architecture. I came across an interesting opinion piece this week by Samir Ahmed, a strategic account manager at Copper Burns Limited, Is Agile Killing the Architect?. It is a follow up to a debate that was conducted last year which resulted in the mindset that Agile has indeed killed the role of the architect. Samir then begins to address a few key takeaways from the debate.

Agile is a Given meaning that agility is the way of the future and is the only way to deliver projects.

Some aspects of business do require centralized thought because there are technical features that would benefit from consistency but there is some debate around if an architect is the one who should be in charge of keeping those features consistent.

Big companies are in trouble without the potential help of architects. Large organizations might not be able to innovate and compete with smaller companies who are embracing agility.

The Name (Again) which addressed if there is any value in being called an “architect”. The conclusion was that there isn’t much value in being a mater builder if being an architect only slowed down projects due to the sake of arbitrarily trying to align to a certain idea of how to do things.

Source:

Ahmed, Samir. “Is Agile Killing the Architect?” Linkedin, 20 Oct. 2016, www.linkedin.com/pulse/agile-killing-architect-samir-ahmed/?trackingId=CvIdRMBNsZ2KOpTofmvLFw%3D%3D&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_content%3B63bnZwkKQZugvmTfJEvnwQ%3D%3D&licu=urn%3Ali%3Acontrol%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_content-object.