Tom Graves

Just received from Open Group the usual stream of invites to the next TOGAF enterprise-architecture conference, this time in Rome, in late April.

Perhaps it’s just spring or something (which it isn’t here, of course – ‘here’ being cold, damp, grey England), but there’s a real sense of change in the TOGAF air. This time, amazingly, there’s barely a Cloud in the sky: instead, at last, almost all of it is enterprise-architecture. Real enterprise-architecture.

As Enterprise Architecture matures there are many challenges which face the fledgling profession, but perhaps the most troublesome is how to find a way to communicate effectively with the business.

EA is fast becoming a business activity and is leaving behind the safe haven of IT. Language and communication now stand front and center as the current and most critical element of EA but how do we go about overcoming what, for many enterprise architects, is arguably our greatest challenge?

This event provides an ideal opportunity for EA professionals to better understand the overriding need to more closely align the practice of EA with the requirements of business decision-making at ‘board room’ level. It will better prepare all EA professionals to make real and significant contributions to the development of business strategy.

“Communicate with the business”, we might note – not “to the business”, which has been the arrogant attitude of IT for so many years. And being explicit that we need to be “leaving behind the safe haven of IT” is a very important step indeed.

But wait: it gets better:

Evolving EA from IT to Business
Plenary theme (Monday)

We all know that EA is evolving and that gives enterprise architects a problem, because it implies that we have to evolve too.

We also know that we need to get closer to business, to make IT-business alignment a thing of the past. It simply isn’t enough for there to be IT-business alignment, there should only be business with IT being as much a part of the business as finance, sales, marketing or operations.

At this conference we will seek to open up the discussions that we, as enterprise architects need to develop to move forward and embrace the future of EA. Attendees can learn about our key challenges in this field, the different approaches to success and can be guided by those who have overcome the challenge of successfully crossing the divide.

And as a key enabler of this change in focus, EA Professionals need to change the language of EA, from “techie speak” to a much more business-oriented language that relates directly to the organization’s key business functions. The conference will explore a future in which enterprise architects engage in meaningful conversation in the Board Room as a matter of course, and in which the enterprise architecture itself constitutes a key enabler of corporate decision-making.

In other words, that crucial shift from ’strategic planning’ to ‘strategic conversation‘. At last.

But wait: it gets better still, in business-architecture terms at least:

Extending EA to the Enterprise
Plenary theme (Tuesday)

The Business Architecture is a key component of any Enterprise Architecture, proving the direct linkage between other, IT-related components of the EA and the key strategic drivers and imperatives of the business. It is the key enabler by which Enterprise Architecture can truly extend its reach to the heart of the enterprise.

Those working in the field of Business Architecture are uniquely positioned to establish tomorrow’s best practices. In this session thought-leaders and leading practitioners in Business Architecture will present the critical success factors for today’s Business Architect.

TOGAF is an industry consensus framework and method for enterprise architecture that is used by organizations around the world. TOGAF is a live framework, continually evolving to accommodate best practices. At this conference we will show how TOGAF can be used today to present Business Architecture in a meaningful way to the business.

In other words, for the first time, business-architecture is described by Open Group as a distinct discipline in its own right, separate from but interrelated with IT-architecture. That’s a huge shift: in the TOGAF 9 specification, released barely a year ago, business-architecture was still in effect described as a jumbled-up grab-bag of “everything not-IT that might impact on IT”.

The only point I’m wary of here is that, in escaping from IT-centrism, this version of EA still risks falling straight into the next trap, that of business-centrism or organisation-centrism. No doubt business-folks might prefer us to do that, but in the long run it’s actually as dangerous as IT-centrism. It’s true that business-architecture should be centred round the needs of the business itself – but just like IT-architecture, that’s not enterprise-architecture either.

An organisation is bounded by agreed rules, or, in the case of a business, by legal obligations; but an enterprise is bounded by feelings and values – which is not the same at all. Without a grounded awareness of its extended-enterprise – the surrounding ecosystem within which it operates – business-architecture risks becoming self-centred, literally narcissistic, and guaranteed to fail in the longer term. An architecture that has a broader scope than the business itself becomes essential to guide the architecture of the business – and that’s what a true ‘architecture of the enterprise as enterprise’ will provide.

Even so, the description of this upcoming conference is very good news: a real sign that we’re at last getting closer to a true enterprise-architecture. At last. At last.

Architecture is non-functional.

I’ll bet that statement raised the blood-pressure a few notches for some folks, yes? Defensive? Irritated? Sarcastic? “Waddayamean, non-functional, hey?”

Good point, because ‘non-functional’ is not the same as ‘has no function’ – although it’s often misread that way…

The problem all stems from an arbitrary and amazingly unhelpful categorisation of project-requirements as either ‘functional’ or ‘non-functional’. In this case, ‘functional’ means ‘what the project/object/thing/whatever does‘, whilst ‘non-functional’ is a generalised grab-bag for any requirements about anything else at all. But because ‘functional’ implies ‘useful’, or ‘working’, whilst ‘non-functional’ kind of implies ‘not-useful’ or ‘not-working’, this categorisation means that so-called ‘non-functional’ requirements are often assigned a much lower priority, or even ignored altogether. Which is not wise, because ‘functional’ requirements only cover the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of a project – and usually only a subset of ‘what’ and ‘how’ at that. Everything else is probably classed as ‘non-functional’: when, where, who, how much, how well, how often, and so on – and ignoring those needs is not wise at all. (The one question that’s often missing from any list of requirements – ‘functional’ or ‘non-functional’ – is why: sometimes it seems that people automatically forget how to ask pertinent questions once ‘The Requirements’ have been defined…) Which is a worry – to say the least.

But there is another way to view the notion of ‘non-functional’ – an alternative term that much better describes the real meaning or purpose of those requirements, and the architecture role with it. I was reminded of this as I skimmed through the presentations at the the current Open Group Enterprise Architecture Practitioners conference in Seattle, and came across the following table in a presentation on ‘Business-Driven IT Strategy‘ by Sam Ishak of First Canadian Title:

The ‘role’ row caught my eye because the same ‘driver/navigator’ metaphor had been used by several people in yesterday’s discussion on strategy. But then I noticed the ‘responsibility’ row – and a light-bulb lit up in my head: “Govern the quality of the solution”. The project-manager deals with the ‘functional requirements’ for the project itself; the architect deals with all the other ‘non-functional requirements’, ensuring that the end-result is not merely efficient in a functional sense, but effective overall. The PM ensures that the end-result works, within the available time and budget; but the architect ensures that it is useful – which is not a trivial matter at all.

So a more general term for ‘non-functional’ is qualitative – ensuring that whatever-it-is not only works, but also does what we want, how, where, when, with whom and, especially, why we want it to do so. There’s not much point in any focus on function alone without also including those qualitative concerns.

Architecture is about quality. Architecture is ‘non-functional’ – and that is what is should be, because its purpose is to “govern the quality of the solution”.

So yes, architecture is indeed ‘non-functional’. But perhaps we ought to be more openly proud of that fact?

Another weblog item that’s been triggered by a question on Twitter, though in this case it came via a personal ‘direct message’ from Australian enterprise-architect Mike Aikins (@AussiMike):

Surely there are groups focused on the art and discipline of strategic planning and execution? How can we coalesce #entarch and these groups

Often there will be several “groups focused on the art and discipline of strategic planning and execution” – or there should be, at any rate. It’s true that enterprise architecture – and especially IT-architecture – will often be landed with a strategic role, though I would suggest that that’s more by default than by actual understanding of what EA is or does.

(Once again this has turned out to be a long explanation, so read on after the ‘Read more…’ link.)

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Back with another stack of Tweets and links – not quite as many as last week. More after the ‘Read more…’ link, anyway.

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Another week, another collection of Tweets and links, perhaps rather longer than usual this time. More after the ‘More info…’ link.

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Another week, another collection of Tweets and links, in the usual categories. A shorter list this time, after the ‘More’ link…

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Better write up some of my notes and memories from the TOGAF Hong Kong conference before I forget them!

Like every TOGAF conference there were some of the same ‘usual suspects’ (including me, of course! ) with their current version of the same developing themes for enterprise-architecture – such cloud-computing, security, TOGAF itself, and (in my case) expanding out beyond IT. But what made this conference special for me was the unique Chinese perspective on what has historically been a somewhat Anglo and technology-driven construct.

This difference in perspective was highlighted especially in presentations that came from three contrasting aspects of Chinese business: a large software-development and training house, a major university, and the Chinese arm of a large US-based multinational.

(Another long post, so continues after the ‘More’ link…)

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And finally the Tweets and links from the week during and after the TOGAF Hong Kong conference. (See the earlier post for the Twitterstream at the conference itself.)

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Still in post-conference catch-up mode. In the meantime, here’s the slidedeck for “Using TOGAF beyond IT”, my presentation to the Open Group conference in Hong Kong. Download the file and view in Powerpoint’s ‘Notes View’ to see the full script.

Note that it explores just one question: what do we need to change in the TOGAF ADM to make it usable for any architecture purpose and any scope in whole-of-enterprise architecture. See my other presentations on Slideshare for other aspects of whole-of-enterprise architecture practice.

Thought it might be useful to various folks (including me!) to post the Twitter-stream from the TOGAF conference (Open Group Enterprise Architecture Practitioners’ Conference, Hong Kong) earlier this week.

For readability I’ve reversed the order so that the tweets are listed earliest-first, and I’ve edited the content slightly to remove RT ‘retweet’ duplications and general ‘personal-stuff’, so as to concentrate on what was said or commented-on during the actual presentations. But otherwise it’s the same as you’ll find on Twitter with the search-hashtag #oghk. Quite long, of course, so you’ll find the rest of this post after the ‘More…’ link.

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