Welcome

Jim Phelps - welcomes everyone.  Talks about Agility - both Technical and Culture - being the thing that keeps him up at night.

Once around the room with introductions and pain points. 

Commonly heard things

budgets that are in silos and the project decisions that aren't aligned with the a larger strategy.

Dealing with Identity Management issues

Being focused on individual projects rather than working on the larger picture

Dealing with homegrown apps, ERPs 

Some Themes:

Federated Architecture
U Chicago has an Architecture steering group made up of senior leaders and senior technologists.  They look at issues - not a roadmap group - that are in front of them.

CMU - also has Federated Architecture model. 

Architectural Control via Budget Control

Discussion about having a CTO who reviews yearly budgets and eliminates funding that doesn't align with architectural plans.

Isolated Architecture

Architecture that stuck in its own silo within a single group. 

Head Architect with Domain Architects

A central architect or architecture group with domain architects in each of the groups.  The head architect and domain architects work together to set the enterprise architecture and to set standards in each of the areas.

Architecture as Advisory Function vs. Architecture as Control

Two types of engagement models:  One is Architects act as advisers to projects - making suggestions and offering a suite of tools to projects.  The second is architecture as a gate function where projects go through architectural reviews to make sure that they are aligned with the enterprise architecture.  Most higher education institutions present are advisory.

FUTURE ACTIVITIES:

Architectural Maturity Model and Architectural Implementation Model - survey of institutions
  • What role does build vs. buy play in how architecture is done at an institution?
  • What about Open Source participation?
Presentation at EDUCAUSE about the Role of Architecture and the Value of Architecture
Role of the vendors (Burton, Gartner, IBM, Sun) in this space:  good experiences, bad experiences, when does it make sense to bring them in.
Running similar applications:  collaboration on integration of these applications
Discussions around data management:  not just storage but metadata management.  What storage type is good for which types of data (Web servers, file store, WebDAV).
Common Integration Points with a variety of applications and external service providers. 
  • Common  requirements for service providers. 
  • What are the questions that we are asking?
  • Exit strategies and get back (not just the data but) the rich integration and relationships and metadata that surrounds it.
On-going discussion about collaboration tools
Change Management tools and processes 
SOA
  • Best of Breed SOA Tools
  • SOA Governance
  • Version Management, SLAs, Data Management (what happens when interfaces change)
Taxonomy of Pain - what are the pain points and how do we fix them.
Common Use Cases.
  • Especially something like Outsourcing Email which we all seem to be looking at right now
Peer Directory and Peer review of work.