Unconventional Archive

  • With a weak crop of developers and architects, I'm concerned we're growing a generation of bad IT managers, directors, VP's and CIO/CTOs. I'm afraid our next generation leadership will be more concerned with the acronyms after their names, with frameworks and methodologies, than with the actual work of IT. That is, with theory rather than delivery.

    Down in the Trough

    With a weak crop of developers and architects, I'm concerned we're growing a generation of bad IT managers, directors, VP's and CIO/CTOs. I'm afraid our next generation leadership will be more concerned with the acronyms after their names, with frameworks and methodologies, than with the actual work of IT. That is, with theory rather than delivery.

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  • Companies like innovation. But they won't be early adopters of an ill-defined and constantly changing mindset. They'll wait for it to calm down a bit, solidify and congeal. Then they'll slowly roll it out and gradually update it over time. Suggesting they take an ADHD approach of constant churn and ongoing rip and replace of the latest EA theories doesn't help them or us as practitioners.

    On the Bleeding Edge

    Companies like innovation. But they won't be early adopters of an ill-defined and constantly changing mindset. They'll wait for it to calm down a bit, solidify and congeal. Then they'll slowly roll it out and gradually update it over time. Suggesting they take an ADHD approach of constant churn and ongoing rip and replace of the latest EA theories doesn't help them or us as practitioners.

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  • EA, like the business and IT philosophies that underpin it, is constantly changing. If enterprise architecture is an architecture in which the system in question is the whole enterprise (including business processes, technologies, and information systems), then there will always be dynamism to it. These elements and components are under constant change.

    The Illusory Maturity of EA

    EA, like the business and IT philosophies that underpin it, is constantly changing. If enterprise architecture is an architecture in which the system in question is the whole enterprise (including business processes, technologies, and information systems), then there will always be dynamism to it. These elements and components are under constant change.

    Continue Reading...

  • The social experience, whether it is Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare or Flickr or the latest release of <insert meaningless gibberish company name here>, it is all about connecting with one another in meaningful ways. A mega, super, hyperactive version of painting details of the mastodon hunt on the walls of a fire lit cave. How do we, as IT practitioners, connect with our peers throughout the enterprise and communicate knowledge that has intrinsic (or divine) value?

    How We Give Fire

    The social experience, whether it is Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare or Flickr or the latest release of , it is all about connecting with one another in meaningful ways. A mega, super, hyperactive version of painting details of the mastodon hunt on the walls of a fire lit cave. How do we, as IT practitioners, connect with our peers throughout the enterprise and communicate knowledge that has intrinsic (or divine) value?

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  • The people who like to create solutions are typically not the best equipped to fully understand the context of the problem. They are structured by nature to take action, to find a way around the obstacle. Their gaze is fixed on the end result, the grand design of what will be in the future state. With this horizon-centric, forward looking perspective, the original purpose for the effort is usually sidelined.

    A Goat, A Rope and a Gonkulator

    The people who like to create solutions are typically not the best equipped to fully understand the context of the problem. They are structured by nature to take action, to find a way around the obstacle. Their gaze is fixed on the end result, the grand design of what will be in the future state. With this horizon-centric, forward looking perspective, the original purpose for the effort is usually sidelined.

    Continue Reading...