July 24, 2008
The Lazy Enterprise Architect – Vision or Reality?
I recently attended a Gartner EA seminar in London. Hosted by the EA gurus Philip Allegra and Brian Burke, the seminar outlined the ”ideal” planning and implementation of an enterprise architecture program (great seminar – try to attend if you can some time).
During the seminar Phil introduced the idea about the ”lazy architect”. The role of the enterprise architect is to ensure that the business and IT are in alignment. And ”ideally”, when an EA program has been well established, the enterprise architect can sit back and just make sure that this alignment is happening.
However, as noted previously on this blog, my practical and academic expertise is that EA is often performed very different in different organizational settings. As Phil and Brian also noted, EA is not a clear-cut movement that can be adopted by any organization with similar results.
EA implementation is context dependent and typically comes with as much frustrations and desperation as accomplishments and joy. Working with many different stakeholders, both leadership and subject matter experts, to build a holistic view of the organization's strategy, processes, information, and information technology assets is not just a walk in the park in most organizations.
EA is still a fairly new discipline, and many organizations have just recently created the role of the architect. Maturity is probably a key word when we want find what Weber would call the ideal type ”lazy architect” – however, in my world the ”lazy architect” is still more vision than reality...
Please let me know how you experience your role as enterprise architect. In my research I try to understand how EA is adopted and your feedback is therefore very valuable to me. Post a note here or drop me an e-mail.
Posted by khm at 03:33 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
July 18, 2007
Guest Editor in Real Life
Clearing ones desk before the summer Holidays can be a rewarding experience. I just found my physical copy of the special issue on E-government Process Integration and Enterprise Architecture that I guest edited in the International Journal of Cases on Electronic Commerce with Vishanth Weerakkody and Marijn Janssen. Now I can show my wife that all the late hours that I spend editing the issue also materialized in something tangible.
In an entry last year I announced the call for papers and we received a bunch of quality papers – all good candidates for publications. However, in the end we decided to publish the following five papers:
- A Comparative Account of Joined-Up Government Initiatives in Dutch and Belgian Social Security
By Homburg, V. M. F.
- Integration and Enterprise Architecture Challenges in E-Government: A European Perspective
By Weerakkody, V.; Janssen, M.; Hjort-Madsen, K.
- Managing E-Government Application Evolution: A State Government Case
By Kung, H. J.; Tung, H. L.; Case, T.
- E-Mexico: Collaborative Structures in Mexican Public Administration
By Luna-Reyes, L. F.; Gil-Garcia, J. R.; Cruz, C. B.
- The E-Government Development, IT Strategies, and Portals of the Hong Kong SAR Government
By HO, K. K. W.
You can find all the papers here.
It was fun to work with Vishanth and Marijn and a great learning experience for me to edit a special issue in a journal. Hopefully, it will not be the last time I do that.
Posted by khm at 02:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 09, 2007
Piling Higher & Deeper Again, Again...
The next three weeks I am working on my PhD (more about academic life here). Buried in books at the IT-University of Copenhagen, I will try to get my hands around my research question, my publications and the red thread in my research.
My first challenge is to reflect on my research question. The blurry question that I am working with these days is “Why and how is enterprise architecture adopted as an information systems planning trend/innovation in the public sector?” It needs to be more focused and linked with my publications.
The goal of my PhD-project is to produce a paper model dissertation that contributes to the scare research carried out in the area of EA in government by conducting various studies in public agencies in Denmark and the USA. So fare, I have a couple of decent publications under my belt. But, I need to produce a plan for 1)which publications to include in my PhD-dissertation and 2)which articles I can/must write to tie it all together.
I am very motivated and will try to keep you all up to date on my progress in the lab.
Posted by khm at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 07, 2007
Public Sector History
Accroding to Computerworld.dk, our wiki is the first ever public sector wiki… Read the article here.
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June 06, 2007
Public Sector 2.0
I have just pressed the ”publish” button on an national wiki about the integration model that I have been working on for the past eight months in the Digital Task Force. You can find the wiki at oim.modernisering.dk (in Danish).
The idea is to use the wiki to allow my colleagues in the public sector (and their commercial vendors) to comment add, remove, and edit content in version 0.5 of the integration model like a real Web 2.0 tool.
The integration model describes how all public portal services can be integrated with our two national portals for citizens (borger.dk) and businesses (virk.dk). What we are trying to do is to build a kind of “third way” architectural style that enables decentralized autonomy and minimal constraints. We are using a minimal specification of easily applied identifiers, formats, and tools.
I hope the wiki will facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing between the portals, the public agencies, and all the commercial vendors. I will blog more about my experiences later – stay tuned!
Posted by khm at 05:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
December 20, 2006
Framing National Enterprise Architectures
Visiting Dr. Marijn Janssen, I am in Delft this week working on a framework for analyzing national EA programs. We are trying to enrich a model that we developed earlier this year for a HICSS 2007 conference paper. The paper was accepted for HICSS and I presented our model at the EA Summit earlier this year. But, we still need to work with it if we want to submit it to a journal. Especially our theoretical foundation needs to be developed further.
The framework should results in a better understanding of national EA efforts. We hypotheses that an analysis of national EAs should at least encompass five elements, 1) Policies, actors and strategies, 2) Governance 3) Architecture model 4) Architecture principles and standards and 5) Implementations. We test this framework by analyzing the EA efforts of two European countries. Our analysis shows that EA should be framed within the institutional environment and governance aspects determine the adoption and diffusion of EA.
Below, I have inserted our original HICSS abstract. The new version of the paper that we are working on will focus more on the theoretical framework than the national case studies. I think we are on to something interesting here – so stay tuned ;-)
National enterprise architectures (NEA) promise to fill the gap between policy and implementation. NEAs are embedded within an institutional environment consisting of active players capable of responding strategically and innovatively to architectural initiatives, which might complicate NEA adoption. In this paper we analyze the efforts of two European national governments in developing enterprise architecture. Grounded in institutional theory and practice we develop an analytical framework and use this framework to analyze the fforts of two countries, Denmark and the Netherlands. Our framework and analysis draws the attention to the need to take a broader perspective on enterprise architecture, especially governance aspects determine the adoption and diffusion of NEA.
Posted by khm at 05:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
October 29, 2006
The First 30 Days...
The first 30 days in the Ministry of Finance have been stressful, frightening, and a lot of hard work. But, it has also been a lot of fun. In many ways my new job is what I expected; very smart new colleagues, a visionary new boss/project manager, and a place where I can make EA in government happen. Working with the new e-government strategy for Denmark is interesting and I am starting to get my hands around the integration model for the new (2008) borger.dk portal.
In the Digital taskforce, Prince2 is the de facto standard for project management and I have, therefore, been Prince2 certified. It was tough to take the exam. But, there are some great tools in Prince2 and I am trying to figure out how EA can be integrated better with the Project Initiation Document (PID). The PID is used to define the project, form the basis for its management and the assessment of overall success. Therefore, we need to work on a "standard" PID for EA program management. I know that some private enterprises in Denmark are working on this link and I am continuously working on this missing link. I will be back with more news when things calm down in the Ministry... Cheers!
Posted by khm at 06:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 29, 2006
Eating My Own Dog Food
The next couple of years I will be eating my own dog food in the Danish Ministry of Finance. Next week I will start a new job as enterprise architect in the national Digital Task Force. The Task Force assists the Danish national steering committee of joint cross-government co-operations in carrying out the adopted e-government projects, and it prepares the basis of the decision-making on the background of cooperation with the involved parties.
My job there will be too give (EA) input too the national e-government strategy and assist different projects with concrete IT/EA architectural thinking. It will be a huge and exiting challenge too be part of the “real” work in the Ministry of Finance - and too see how/if my thoughts will influence the national EA work. Communicating the value of EA will be one of my key challenges. I have spent the last couple of years preaching how fantastic a tool EA is. The interesting question will be: Will the dog eat the dog food? I will try too keep you all posted…
Posted by khm at 08:37 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Gartner UPdated
Please find my updated Gartner pitch here. The conference was great hype and I will be there again next year!
Posted by khm at 08:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 19, 2006
The Missing Link Between Application and Enterprise Architecture
I very often meet frustrated project managers and application architects complaining about smart-ass enterprise architects armed with high-level PowerPoint slide-ware about transformation, innovation and consolidation. It is unclear to these people how enterprise architecture (EA) can help them in their daily lives and they therefore see EA as a gatekeeper and resist the enterprise-wide perspective. But, why do we see this missing link again and again and how can we bridge the gap?
An EA tells the organization where they are on the IT map and identifies a transition plan for building a desired “to-be” architecture whose scope encompasses all of the computing of an enterprise. Application architecture designs, implements and maintains specific IT-systems. Hey, what is the problem?! The way I see it, the problem is the missing link is between the top-down EA work that defines and sponsors strategic IT projects and the bottom-up needs of business managers and innovative application architects.
I think governance and communication is two of the key ingredients if we want to bridge the gap between EA and application architecture. We need to define a clear link between processes for system development, project management, vendor management, capital planning, and strategic planning. It must be clear for the project managers and application architects how the EA program will help them in their daily lives and it must be clear to the EA program that they can not live in an ivory tower disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life in the IT engine room.
I have seen some great example of how EA programs are reaching out to application architects. But, unfortunately, most of the programs I have seen are struggling to find the missing link. If any of you have experiences with this “missing link” please let me know. I will be working with my colleagues from IBM on this issue. Maybe they have some shelf-ware that can help us ;-)
Posted by khm at 08:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)