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Category: Enterprise Architecture

  • Bob Sutor in First Life, Copenhagen

    Bob Sutor is in Copenhagen, and will give a public lecture at the IT University at 5pm today, Wednesday. He’ll talk about what’s going on with open standards and why it’s important, also to IT students. I’ve reserved the big lecture hall (Aud 1), and everyone is welcome to join us.

    I’m certain that Bob will talk about the situation around document formats, where a lot is happening. Just covering the past couple of days’ events around the standards is a talk in itself: It’s clear now (!) that many standards bodies point to contradictions around Ecma Office Open XML and its submission to ISO, so the fast-track for Microsoft’s Office 2007 format becoming a standard is slowed down (at least, if not stopped?). In other news, two more US states gives more momentum to OpenDocument, and ODF passes yet another maturity signpost as ODF 1.1 is now an OASIS Standard.

    Over at my Danmark 2.0 blog, I have suggested that the newly formed S-142/U-34 Danish Standards mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 34 spend their time on making ODF a Danish Standard. That would be kind of ironic with all those Microsoft Gold Partners in the group, I know, but none the less, I’m deadly serious about the proposal!

  • Version2: New Media for IT Professionals

    Version2

    On Monday, Danish media house Ingeniøren A/S will launch the first phase of Version2, a new biweekly magazine and online media for IT professionals in Denmark. I’m proud to say that I’m part of the team behind Version2.
    The magazine and website will launch in November, but we will start the river of news via Ingeniørens site next week, where Tania and I are covering the JAOO-conference.

    The “real” Version2 opening in November will be our attempt at practising “Media 2.0″/”News 2.0” or whatever – lots of good blogs, wikis, and all that.

  • 2006 International Enterprise Architecture Survey

    Get the journal article we wrote about this.

    Peter Engelund Christiansen and I are pleased to announce a new report and website: EASurvey.org: International Enterprise Architecture Survey – Trends in Governmental Enterprise Architecture on a National Level.

    The report presents key findings from an international survey about governmental EA on a national/federal level conducted earlier this year. 16 countries participated in the survey: Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nothern Ireland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and USA.

    The survey documents trends in governmental EA and focuses on eight areas:

    • EA motivation
    • Achieved goals and barriers
    • EA measurement
    • EA process
    • EA framework
    • EA tool
    • EA governance
    • Existing EA assets

    The key findings are:

    EA on a national level is emerging fast
     93.3% of the participating governments are already having – or planning to have within the next two years – a national EA program. Only one government does not have any future plans incorporating a national EA program.

    Limited realisation of EA goals
    54% of the governments with national EA programs have experienced the achievement of EA goals.

    The lack of skilled staff is considered as the greatest barrier against the achievement of EA goals
     55% of the governments report “lack of skilled staff” as the greatest barrier against the achievement of EA goals.

    Less than half of the governments are measuring EA program performance
     Accordingly, less that one half of the governments are using key performance indicators.

    Less than one fifth of the governments are calculating the ratio EA benefits to cost
     18% of the governments, Japan and Taiwan, are calculating the total expenditures in EA, the total amount gained from EA and the ratio EA benefits to costs.

    Less than one fifth of the governments have mandated their EA programs via legislation
     18% of the governments, USA and Korea, have national EA programs that are mandated by legislation.

    Less than one third of the governments know whether their publicized EA processes are used
     72% of the participating governments have publicized guidelines describing an EA process. 29% of those governments do not know whether the guidelines are used or not.

    We conclude with some calls to action:

    • Define clear and measurable EA goals
    • Do not uncritically buy the vendors ‘Ten steps to successful EA’ and expect the world to change in any advantageous direction
    • Measure EA performance to ensure progress and ultimately EA success
    • Calculate EA expenses-/earnings to enable communication in a monetary terminology; it becomes necessary
    • Do not make the mistakes of the past
    • Do not isolate an EA team and expect them to generate value-adding EA

    The survey is endorsed by the Association of Enterprise Architects (a|EA), but a|EA does not necessarily agree with our calls to action.

    The bulk of the work was done by Peter in his Master of IT thesis project, which explains the survey in excruciating levels of detail, and which is as clear an A+ as I’ve ever seen and supervised. I helped connecting Peter to the survey I started two years ago, and introduced him to relevant respondents around the world. After the exams, we have worked together on quality assurance and recommendations, but Peter should really get all the credit.

    Get the journal article we wrote about this.

  • Successful enterprise architecture

    Vibeke Trolle Hansen has published her Master of IT thesis, Enterprise Architecture – how to establish and sustain a successful EA (3MB PDF).

    Abstract
    Enterprise architecture aims to establish business and IT alignment. EA is often applied to ensure a more central business driven IT portfolio, and make the organisation more agile in managing change. Having analysed the EA discipline including the EA definition, EA frameworks, governance, change management and EA maturity and business value measures from a theoretical perspective, I aim at defining a set of guidelines that will inspire organisations in practice to create a successful EA in a structured manner.

    After I have defined the set of guidelines, I apply them on two cases, SKAT and ATP. The case analyses show that the organisations have established many of the relevant processes necessary to implement and sustain a business driven IT portfolio, but also that both organisations still have a long way to go to fully reach their objectives. SKAT has a very strong project model that already takes the new IT architectures into account and ensure compliance with their IT modernisation project. The main obstacle, however, is that SKAT does not fully appreciate the value EA can generate for them, and even though they are working in the right direction, the approach seems ad hoc. SKAT claims that they are not interested in establishing an EA although this is partly what they are doing. To me this implies lack of structures, which the EA discipline may provide when implementing and sustaining a business driven IT portfolio. ATP, on the other hand, is deliberately conducting an EA. They have thoroughly performed many of the initial EA investigations and are ready to seize the challenge in implementing their EA in the organisation. My main obstacle in this analysis is, however, that ATP ought to put more focus on EA governance as opposed to mainly focussing on IT governance at the top level in their EA. This could ensure more coherent governance structures of the entire framework.

    The theoretical framework and best practise conclusions, thus, lead me to define a set of guidelines that proved very useful in my case analyses. The guidelines consist of four stages:
    1. EA foundation stage
    2. EA approach stage
    3. EA governance and management stage
    4. EA maturity and measurement stage

    The guidelines should be useful in bridging the gap between theory and practise within the EA field, and may, hopefully, assist organisations in creating and sustaining a successful EA.

    I recommend everyone interested in EA to read Vibeke’s thesis. It’s very well written, it’s thorough and it’s an excellent analysis of two major Danish EA cases. Vibeke was offered a job in one of the cases, ATP, and now work for them.

  • EA Fellows

    I’m proud to be one of the founders of EA Fellows, a Danish think-tank offering enterprise architecture consulting services. I’ve teamed up with fellow bootstrappers Allan Bo Rasmussen (Zebranet), Bo Møller (ConceptLab) and Tommy Pedersen (SimMark), and we have now opened EAFellows.com. Besides providing information about our services and products (yes, we have products!), we also run a blog, where we will make commentary about EA. We’re focusing on the Danish/Nordic market, and the site/blog is in Danish only.

  • a|EA Denmark

    I have established a local Chapter of the Association of Enterprise Architects (a|EA) together with my good friend and ex-colleague, Kristian Hjort-Madsen, who serves as a|EA’s international secretary.

    The inaugural meeting of the a|EA Denmark Chapter will take place at the IT University in Copenhagen on March 2 from 2pm-5pm. Besides establishing the chapter (electing board etc.), the meeting will include various EA-presentations. If you want to join us, contact Kristian or me. We need a few good people to join the local board, so if you’re interested in helping, get in touch. Remember that only member can join the board. Become an a|EA member now! We welcome professionals as well as students.

  • My EA Course

    I forgot to announce that I in Spring 2006, from February to April, again am running my masters course T8 Enterprise Architecture at the IT University of Copenhagen. The course is open to ITU-students as well as anyone else qualifying for Open University. There are usually many external students, and the class discussions are great.

    The class runs over 12 weeks. Besides lectures by me and guests, students are requested to make a project. Most of these projects are case-based, and (external) students often use their own organisations as cases.

  • Spelling out EA

    Jon Udell is Spelling out SOA via Acronym Finder. Interesting exercise 🙂

    On SOA, I also like Save Our Asses.

    EA is also:
    Earth Alliance
    Enforceable Agreement
    Endangerment Assessment
    Engagement Area
    Extended Arrangement
    Endless Ages
    Examining for Aphasia

    Hmmm.

  • Judgement Day

    The Digital Taskforce today published the final version (actually marked “pre-public draft”) of the OECD Peer Review of e-Government in Denmark. That’s definately been worth waiting for, and is an absolute must-reader for everyone in e-government and enterprise architecture. The OECD-team has done an outstanding job. Good job, Edwin, Christian, Gustaf, and all!

    The near 200 pages long review is full of good stuff, that should make everyone in Danish e-government not only proud, but also make us think about what we’re doing.

    In line with the decentralised nature of Danish government, and the strong autonomy of local government, the Joint Board does not have any formal powers to decide how, where or when government organisations (other than those of its members) will implement e-government. While this is consistent with Danish traditions of public management, many people interviewed for this review felt that more mandatory e-government requirements would help achieve even stronger results – especially in relation to adoption of the Danish “enterprise architecture” and related technical standards. Government-wide adoption of the enterprise architecture and standards for such things as ICT system and data interoperability is now widely acknowledged by OECD countries as being leading-edge e-government practice, supporting objectives such as increased efficiency, collaborative services delivery, and increased competitiveness of ICT industries. To achieve a full measure of these benefits, adoption of architectures and standards must be as widespread as possible. The question of how to respond to this situation is central to the ongoing progress of e-government in Denmark. (p. 9)

    The review examined the impact of various national strategies/initiatives:

    To which the reviewers comment:

    While these results are very positive, the fact that only 30% of respondents identified the Danish enterprise architecture as a significant driver, and only 12% cited the public sector modernisation programme, indicates that some aspects of e-government may benefit from more attention and leadership from the Joint Board.

    Under Proposals for action, we find:

    2. The Government could respond to widespread calls, from both within and outside government, to make certain aspects of e-government mandatory by assessing: 1) where, when and how moving away from the current approach of voluntarism might improve the results being achieved through e-government; and 2) what risks might arise from such a shift, both for individual organisations and government as a whole. Any such assessment could focus, in particular, on issues and options for change in the area of implementation of the Danish enterprise architecture and related technical standards.

    16. Collaboration between government organisations is a key to achieving Denmark’s e-government goals. Much effort has been put into providing co-ordination, and common ICT infrastructures and frameworks in support of better collaboration. While resources are still committed to their ongoing development, it is now important that these frameworks be widely translated by individual organisations into e-government systems, services and processes. The Government should examine the adequacy and/or efficacy of incentives that exist for government organisations to adopt or align with these e-government frameworks, and alter them as required. In particular, in relation to the Danish enterprise architecture and associated technical standards, the Government should examine issues around translating these from concepts into actual implementations, and consider what actions can be taken to address them.

    The OECD survey examined the technological challenges, and found that sharing standards and infrastructure among agencies was the single most important issue identified:

    The reviewers say:

    This result emphasises the importance of the work Denmark is doing in developing an enterprise architecture and other arrangements for achieving interoperability of information systems and data. It may also reflect the significant managerial and cultural challenges that accompany technological issues in this area of e-government.

    On EA, the review identifies two major concerns:

    • A major concern that, while the enterprise architecture and supporting standards and frameworks have been very well developed at the conceptual level, they are proving more difficult to translate into the actual standards and schemas required for implementation. Many people working to implement the architecture find it abstract and difficult to understand.
    • A second major concern that, while municipalities are solidly committed to the concept of enterprise architecture and common standards, their heavy reliance on one ICT vendor that provides them with many proprietary (i.e. non-standard) systems significantly slows the pace of their adoption of standards, and therefore the rate at which collaborative e-government goals can be achieved.

    All in all, the review mentions ‘enterprise architecture’ 53 times throughout the report. That should hopefully stimulate advances in the debates about EA, and as I said, make some of us think about where we’re going. Clearly, EA is important to advances in e-government. I’ve said that for years now, but it’s great to see OECD making the outcry so strongly as they do.

  • Mastering EA

    From Down Under, RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) is offering a complete Master of Enterprise Architecture, a high-level IT postgraduate by coursework program, specifically designed for ICT professionals who wish to advance their career to the role of Enterprise Architect within an organisation. That’s a great initiative!

    Looking at the description, however, it occurs to me that there is very much technology and too little business in the curriculum.

    My two EA Masters courses (at ITU and Copenhagen Business School) serve as individual “EA-infusions” in various masters programmes: Master in eBusiness, Master in Software Development, and Master in Business Administration and Computer Science. A number of students choose to continue after the course to create their own “Master of Enterprise Architecture” within one of the major programmes, by making individual projects under my supervision.

    One of the discussions I often get into is about whether you can train an enterprise architect, or whether it’s a discipline of practicians. My view on this is simple: Of course you can train people in enterprise architecture, and even young (and bright) students can learn a lot. That doesn’t necessarily make them practising enterprise architects, however. You can also take a master in rocket-science, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you get to build NASAs new rockets right away. I think there is a need for EA training at all levels, from students to CEOs and politicians.

    The professionals can choose the Open Group IT Architect Certification Program or some of the other Enterprise Architecture Certification schemes, if certification is what’s needed.