R&A IT Strategy & Architecture
Articles about IT, IT Strategy, and Enterprise Architecture
R&A is the vehicle for Gerben Wierda’s ‘extracurricular activities’ (what he does next to his day job and family life — or what’s left of that). Mostly writing and sometimes a bit of training or consultancy. R&A is also the publisher of Mastering ArchiMate and Chess and the Art of Enterprise Architecture.
This site combines the previous separate content of masteringarchimate.com and enterprisechess.com.
IT is notoriously hard to manage and it has been so for decades. As a result, the execution of new strategies is often exceedingly difficult. These 4 articles (2 serious, 2 a bit tongue-in-cheek) are meant to enlighten non-IT-savvy board members.
What is the information revolution doing to us humans? A very condensed journey from essences of digital technology and human intelligence to the role of talk, trust and the impact of IT on society.
(What I consider to be) my key articles on (governance and fundamentals of) IT and EA in general. Easily accessible from here.
What can we estimate about where the Generative AI innovation is going? Three useful links to articles that give interesting observations and insights.
Today, it has been 11 years, 11 months, and 11 days since the first post on this blog. The blog was called masteringarchimate.com and the first years the modelling language ArchiMate was the subject. To celebrate, I am today presenting my ArchiMate 3.2 compatible (here and there a bit opinionated) ‘ArchiMate Cheat Sheets’ in PDF. A preliminary, English only version. More to come later…
As the IT world has been largely taken over by Agile methods, the concepts of Definition of Ready and Definition of Done have become mainstream.
While these concepts were introduced at the story/sprint level in Scrum, they have taken on a wide role and are generally used at all levels these days, not just on stories, but also on features and epics, the larger items in the agile-tree. There is, however, a new concept that maybe very helpful at the higher levels that we might use: a Definition of Broken.
If someone tries to get you to invest in some shiny new technology — like blockchain 5-8 years ago — beware. How do you judge these proposals? A realistic use case is key.
Cicero, an AI, performed in the top 10% against human performers in the game Diplomacy, which is about negotiating with others. chatGPT is making the rounds with its impressive output. Are these AI breakthroughs or at least signs of real progress? Or signs of trouble to come?
A useful addition to the original concept of Sunshine-Life Cycle Management to help managing it all.
Advisors need (a) to know what they are talking about and (b) be able to convince others. For architects, the first part is called ‘architecture’ and the second part could be called ‘the psychology of architecture’.
We tend to do that already, but most attention is paid to the role of the advisor. But it takes two to tango. The ‘receiving end’ (the one being advised) plays a key role and it is here that psychological and neurological research of the last few decades on ‘the architecture of psychology’ can be put to good use.
The Open Group has published a minor update to the ArchiMate® standard. It is now version 3.2. This short post explains the upgrade policy for the PDF version of the Mastering ArchiMate book.
Is layering — e.g. the classic BDAT (Business, data, Application, Technology) stack — really useful in Enterprise Architecture? An analysis with some side nodes about ArchiMate.
Warning: may contain traces of analytic EA geekery.
Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer, has claimed the LaMDA language neural net chatbot is sentient, is alive. Nonsense on stilts, according to one critic.
A musing about the meaning of ‘life’. And abortion. And doubt. And the point Lemoine has but doesn’t make.
The NIST definition of Cloud Computing from 2011 has now become so much an oversimplification that it is more often than not unhelpful, e.g. when trying to base your policies on it. So, forget about ‘IAAS’ and ‘PAAS’, end your ‘cloud policies’ or cloud-specific procedures. Instead, concentrate on managing the key generic issue underlying it: the ever more complex mixes of owned and outsourced algorithms and data..
McKinsey seems to be the first ‘big consultancy’ that really frees itself from outdated, ineffective, orthodox enterprise architecture notions.
R&A IT Strategy & Architecture 