Field Notes
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Identifying Value Opportunities
As enterprise architects, it is too easy to be led by business demand that is not aligned with strategic business imperatives. Sometimes these imperatives are not explicitly identified in the strategic documents that circulate. Where are the value opportunities? The start point for understanding value opportunities is the value chain. We generalise the original model…
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Wisdom of the “doers”
My first job was driving a tractor on a farm. I was the junior, the trainee. I got the lowest skill jobs. I mucked out chickens. I nursed sick puppies from the pack of beagles. I moved bales of straw from one barn to another. I swept the barns. All I needed for this was…
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Moving at Pace: Strategy Sprints
We had a problem. People saw our work, saw us; “architecture”, “strategy”, “whatever!”; it didn’t matter what they called it or us. They weren’t calling us; we were perceived as something slow, theoretical and bureaucratic. There was a gap between us and the business. A failure to show our value. Incidentally, we were 9500 km…
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Good Performance?
Most architects that I know pay very little attention to their reputation and visibility within their organisations. They typically consider such activities with contempt. It is playing politics, it is putting style over substance, it is dishonest. Dishonest? Yes, dishonest! Why? Because every success is a team effort. Any one person taking credit is disrespecting…