Inside Architecture
Notes on Enterprise Architecture, Business Alignment, Interesting Trends, and anything else that interests me this week...
Conversational Antipatterns on Message Boards
Architects argue. I have, over the past year, spent a good bit of time on LinkedIn Message...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/22/2012
On My Move To Consulting Services
This is the official announcement. After seven years of providing Enterprise Architecture...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/14/2012
Three Schools of Thought for Enterprise Architecture
It is interesting to watch the debates online between the different schools of thought of Enterprise...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/28/2012
Setting Up A New EA or BA Practice
Recently, I was contacted via this blog by an individual who had been challenged to set up a new...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/20/2012
EA Certifications Distilled
Mike Walker, one of my colleagues here at Microsoft, has done an excellent job of distilling various...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/08/2012
On the road to a Business Architecture Manifesto
One very powerful metaphor that has reverberated throughout the technical community, in the past few...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/06/2012
Should We Kill The Architecture Review Board?
OK… I’ll say it. The whole idea of an Architecture Review Board may be wrong-headed. ...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 04/17/2012
Podcasts with the Canadian Information Processing Society
I was honored, recently, when the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) decided to...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 04/13/2012
Analysis, Synthesis, and Scope: Business Architecture vs. Business Analysis, part two
A few days ago, I quickly dashed off a post on the difference between a business architect and a...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 04/08/2012
The difference between business architect and business analyst
[Author’s note: within an hour of posting the following article, Kevin Brennen of the IIBA...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 04/06/2012
Time-to-Release – the missing System Quality Attribute
I’ve been looking at different ways to implement the ATAM method these past few weeks. ...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/09/2012
How Enterprise Architects can cope with Opportunistic Failure
You may not think that Failure is a desired outcome, and on the surface, there are some negative...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/05/2012
MSBI–Part 2—What is a core diagram?
In her wildly popular book, Enterprise Architecture As Strategy, Dr. Jeanne Ross describes the use...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 02/14/2012
Creating a Core Diagram for Agile Business
Today, I gave my talk at the Open Group conference that presents a step-by-step method for creating...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/31/2012
Do you address the complaint, address the root cause, or both?
Imagine a future where robots run the hospitals as a way to cut health care costs. A robot...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/13/2012
A Modern Update to The Blind Men and The Elephant
My humble apologies to John Godfrey Saxe, whose poem I have modified to add a seventh man, and to...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/11/2012
Wikipedia’s EA article, second pass
After a rather protracted discussion on LinkedIn about the Wikipedia article on Enterprise...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/04/2012
Customer 2.0 Strikes
For those folks who don’t normally track the events of the Gamer community, I’d like to share a...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/28/2011
Wikipedia and the definition of Enterprise Architecture
I was asked, this week, about a page that I had put into Wikipedia nearly three years ago. Far...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/13/2011
Using Enterprise Architecture To Get The CIO To The Strategy Table
Recently, Patrick Gray blogged on TechRepublic that IT has a Chicken and Egg problem. In his...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/21/2011
The End of Flash
The writing is on the wall. Adobe has abandoned Mobile Flash in favor of HTML5. It is...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/09/2011
To create a roadmap, we need to know what it is supposed to accomplish
I’ve been involved in a number of meetings recently as our IT teams try to come to consensus on...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/04/2011
Governance in an Organic Enterprise
I spent a few minutes this evening reading through Tom Graves’ fascinating post Management as ‘just...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/28/2011
When IT Architects Describe EA to other IT Architects
Sometimes, I have a hard time being upbeat about the emergence of EA as a profession. This...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/02/2011
Explaining Capability Modeling to Business Process Professionals
As I’ve noted in prior posts, many hard working business process management professionals find the...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 08/19/2011
Enterprise Business Motivation Model version 3.5
For those of you who have been waiting for me to announce the release of the newest version of the...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/27/2011
Finding Common Ground: in response to a BPTrends article on Process and Capability
Recently, Paul Harmon published an article in BPTrends that discusses his views on the notion of...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/26/2011
The Rule of EA Governance
There is a clear distinction between Enterprise Architecture, as described by the architect, and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/21/2011
What EA Means to One Agency of the Federal Government
I ran across a document from the Dept. of Commerce that describes Enterprise Architecture as...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/21/2011
Putting the brakes on “capability obesity”
Microsoft IT made a bet, a couple of years ago, on using capability modeling in our own internal...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/15/2011
Business Strategy and Kindergarten Soccer
Back when my kids were small, they all played soccer on local youth teams. It is interesting...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/13/2011
EA Schools of Thought
As an Enterprise Architect, I’m first and foremost a problem solver. I don’t like to ignore...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/01/2011
Video Podcast: How Microsoft Does Enterprise Architecture
It is amazing how often I need to share the very basic concept of Enterprise Architecture with my...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/23/2011
IT is part of the business, but not for the reasons you think
A colleague of mine, Gabriel Morgan, pointed out a recent Infoworld article by Bob Lewis called...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/16/2011
On the Hunt for the One-Page View of an Enterprise
I am currently noodling the idea of a one-page view of my employer (Microsoft) for the purpose of...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/03/2011
Has the concept of “alignment” entered the infamous “trough of disillusionment?”
In the May 15th issue of CIO magazine, there is a rather interesting article, especially for...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/31/2011
Metamodel 101
I was just privy to a conversation about the value of creating a specific kind of metamodel, and it...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/26/2011
Segment Architecture in a Commercial Setting
The notion of an Enterprise Architect in a Segment (aka “Segment Architect”) has been...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 04/25/2011
Myths of Microsoft Culture
From time to time, I hear interesting anecdotes from colleagues or friends outside Microsoft,...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/27/2011
The ivory tower is a distant memory
Just reading through a LinkedIn thread on “the biggest problem facing Enterprise Architecture,” and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/20/2011
Perhaps the most valuable conversation you can have… starts with a question
A co-worker and I spent an hour doing something innovative… and no, it was not part of a “Google 20%...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/15/2011
The responsibility of architecture is to create an architecture of responsibility
I cannot take credit for that aphorism… credit goes to Jan Van Til. He coined the term after...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/09/2011
It’s not about cost savings… it’s about value
The word ‘value’ has too many meanings and sometimes it masks a real problem. I had a...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 03/01/2011
The difference between selling EA and performing EA
Through a discussion on LinkedIn, I ran across a rather goofy blog post titled (“EA does not...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 02/24/2011
Three word definition of Enterprise Architecture: Reduce Unnecessary Effort
I was speaking with a software architect, yesterday, after Martin Sykes, Mark West, and myself...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 02/18/2011
What is misalignment?
In order to solve a problem, you have to know the problem you are solving. In a growing number...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 02/10/2011
The Day that Star Trek Died
Twenty five years ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift off, killing seven...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/29/2011
In the white space between stakeholders
The more time I spend as an Enterprise Architect, the more I realize just how important this role...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/10/2011
Essential Project–Open Source EA Metamodel
One thing that often occurs when a team sets out to create an EA tool is that they create a...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/31/2010
Can EA Data be independent of the Metamodel?
One thing that I’ve come to appreciate is both the importance, and impermanence, of the Enterprise...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/30/2010