Agenda
- Roll Call (by timezone - East to West)
- Scribe Shout-out - It's easy to scribe: How To Scribe Itana Notes
- Agenda Bash
- Practice of Architecture - How has it changed? New Year's Resolutions? - Jim, Piet, all
- Itana Org Updates
- Working Group Updates
- Steering Committee Update
Materials
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1y2zkNW6F8XMyriKlf7omMftEYqpt-X7YIMRjt1IjR78/
Attendees
How has EA Changed?
CEB perspective –
- 2000 - 2004 Ad-hoc – Expert Engineers
- 2005 - 2011 Standardization -- Cross-stack expertise
- 2011 - present Cross-functional hybrid, capability-centric
EA shifts
- owning to federating – move from hub to coordination
- fight complexity with collaboration (Chess and EA)
- emphasis on teaching / enabling vs doing (e.g. course on "how to think like an architect")
- Louis: Our institution's practice is increasingly influenced by external environment (e.g. SaaS, outsourcing).
- Louis: Influenced by "design thinking." There are basic design principles that are approachable by people who aren't necessarily trained as architects.
- JJ: Multiplier effect of networks. By getting people to work together better and think more like architects.
- Shift in the kinds of artifacts e.g. making user story JIRA templates that can be consumed at time of need in agile methodologies.
EA Now
- Federating EA
- Collaborative EA Guidance
- Strategy & Biz Capability Centric
- EA as Service Provider
- Piet: In Agile practices, we need to be able to inject enterprise requirements into backlog of project requirements.
- Jim: Laundry list of possible engagements does not get smaller.
- Louis: How do we measure the financial value of EA? Value proposition is vague, in business terms. Higher Ed doesn't answer to the bottom line profit level for proving its value. There aren't existing measures in place to map into.
- Daniel: If we get a reputation from helping people solve problems, that demonstrates value.
- Jim: Stories can be held up, but it's hard to do that all the time.
- Piet: Quantifying isn't all that well developed. But there are other efforts to connect to e.g. administrative excellence efforts. Those programs can't always demonstrate "widgets" but they can tell a story.
A Story about EA
- As IT has grown over the past few decades, different organizations have had different success in terms of ensuring the integration and alignment of IT
- Higher Ed has seen fragmentation of both IT and business units.
- Higher Ed often doesn't have a very unified mission
- Architects do "across" work to provide organizational "glue" and attempt to reverse the fragmentation.
- This work is time consuming and iterative and hard to cost justify, but is very mission critical.
- Ray: In any organization of sufficient size, there is a rift between business and IT. Does EA have the charter to mend the rift between business and IT?
- Louis: It's not clear that business is fragmented vs compartmentalized? Is it accidental or intentional?
- Piet: It's both.
- Louis: Senior biz leaders often don't look outside of own domains. There is a disconnect between compartmentalized biz and fragmented IT.
- Betsy: Approach of incremental inroads is not effective. Perhaps reaching out and finding burning issues is a better way to provide value.
- Ashish: New EA team at UCSD – this is helpful information.
Chat Dialog
Jim Phelps: https://goo.gl/forms/TmGikmdDPp83ITcj2
Jim Phelps: Use the form above to suggest Itana Topics
Daniel Black (Miami of Ohio): To be clear, I won't be on the whole call so me scribing isn't a great solution. :)
Piet Niederhausen (UWash): If you have trouble seeing the slides in Adobe Connect, they are also online here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1y2zkNW6F8XMyriKlf7omMftEYqpt-X7YIMRjt1IjR78/
Louis King (Yale University): Thanks Piet
Daniel Black (Miami of Ohio): Thanks. Dropping off the web meeting but I'll be listening on the call.
Dan Kiskis (Michigan): EA is mentioned in the Scaled Agile Framework: http://www.scaledagileframework.com/
Dana Miller-Miami University-Ohio: My resolution is to keep on validating, through client engagement, the capability and service model developed so far. The goal is to develop a common language with the business.
Louis King (Yale University): I am really trying to figure out what our next steps should be. I am inclined to continue to build out the network of architects but having trouble penetrating the business leaders network.
J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin): Wisconsin is close to starting an EA Community of Practice in line with the federated EA concept.
J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin): Meaning we are about to roll it out.
Dan Kiskis (Michigan): I'd be interested in hearing more about the CoP for EA.. Who are the target members? topics?
Piet Niederhausen (UWash): Hi Dan, let's continue that conversation, perhaps on the Itana email list. At the UW we have multiple CoPs, one of them led by EA currently (others led by various IT leaders).
Piet Niederhausen (UWash): In the CoP that we lead as EA, the members are primarily solutoin/technical architects on various teams, and we're trying to encourage data and business architects as well.
Announcements - Itana News, Working Group Report out