Roll Call (by timezone - East to West)
Scribe Shout-out
Agenda Bash
Itana Org Updates
Working Group Updates
Spring Face2Face 2016
Round Table - Discussion of architecture related challenges at your university
From the Adobe Connect attendee list (may not include people who only called in):
Beth Schaefer has agreed to join the ITANA Steering Committee -- welcome!
Leo Fernig has withdrawn from the ITANA Steering Committee
API working group continues to meet; see the ITANA mailing list
Face2Face update:
Looking for a few more participants
For details see the Face2Face page here
Open round table discussion:
Louis King (Yale)
Started new strategic thinking/planning processes
Targeted to areas with an absence of strategic thinking, or a group that is coalescing and could benefit from report
Adapted ideas from an existing leadership program
Method includes:
Scan of the environment -- factors including financial, demographic, customer needs, etc.
Headline the desired future state; apply SMART criteria to it
Gap analysis; assess the current state
Develop strategies
Very effective at bonding people who don’t work together currently by discussing future vision, before looking at current state (which tends to lead to “finger pointing”)
Used on multiple initiatives with different scales and complexity
Overall, this targets portions of the portfolio to jump start, compared with prior portfolio-wide strategy efforts that had lots of participation but didn’t result in much actionable work
Created a facilitator guide; an article on this work is forthcoming
Mike Janke (Minnesota)
Working on starting an architecture practice, drawing from existing IT systems staff (from a central IT staff that serves 31 institutions across the state system)
Bootstrapping is hard, and so is changing the organization
One challenge is sorting out architecture from design; historically the same people did architecture, design, and some implementation -- and the phases are not distinct
Not staffed for “heavy” architectural and design processes
Parts of the organization are more or less receptive/asking for architecture
The EA group can offer a range of views: from opinions to guidance to recommendations to requirements
Discussion about how to give architecture “teeth” and limit exceptions:
Mike: Issues are escalated to the leadership team reporting to the state CIO
Louis: Issues are brought to a Technical Architecture Committee with university-wide representation that applies guiding principles
Chris: Similar process
Mike referred to: Stefan Bente, Collaborative Enterprise Architecture
Want to be lean/agile, but also want to make sure recommendations are well researched, grounded, in standard formats, etc.
Discussion about “changing the wheels on a moving car”:
Mike: With ¾ of effort dedicated to maintaining existing solutions, few people can really envision a significantly different future state
Important to show a future but be clear it will take a long time to get there and the path could change by the time we do
J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin)
Enabling a governance group to evaluate projects/initiative
Using some ITANA architecture library techniques, specifically the Investment Value Matrix
Main goal is to help see which of many options should be looked at most closely
Hoping to also use something like brick diagrams to document the service portfolio
Jim’s notes on the Adobe whiteboard:
EA Best Practice - Focus on an area - don't try to boil the whole portfolio. Better to have actionable EA in an area that is ripe for change and worth the strategic investment.
EA Best Practice - Future State First. Better to know where you are going and what the vision is rather than where you need to leave. This is a good way to bring people together. Starting with current state just inflames current politics and silos. Many can find a common vision of the future who disagree on the current state.
EA Best Practice - Your architecture processes should be only as heavy as is needed. Don't add overhead and formality unless you have a strong reason to do so. The goal is to deliver value not build bureaucracy
EA Best Practice - Success will build influence. Start with things you can accomplish and have success in to demonstrate the value of architecture. People will come to you once you have demonstrated success.
EA Best Practice - Build a community of contributors - this helps you get buy-in and leverage your limited architecture resources
From the Adobe chat window:
Jim Phelps: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/itana/Spring+Face2Face+2016+Overview+and+Logistics
Luke Tracy - UMich: Hi. Just joined the call
Jim Phelps: Do you have examples or samples someplace we could see?
Jim Phelps: Welcome Luke
Bob Dein & company (Miami OH): Portfolio of ? Applications, Infrastructure, Services?
Chris Eagle (Michigan): +5 on that best practice!
Jim Phelps: Let me plug the Spring Face2Face 2016 once more. It is all about Facilitation skills.
J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin): Phone conf with Gartner 2 years ago said that the pendulum is swings back & forth between doing future or current state 1st.
Daniel Black - Miami Ohio: "Bureaucracy"
Bob Dein & company (Miami OH): We started out emphasizing future state and then our new CIO changed our operating model which depended heavily on having a good current state representation in order to analyze IT requests, especially strategic
Chris Eagle (Michigan): Welcome Beth!
Beth Schaefer: Thanks, Chris!
Jim Phelps: Thanks Daniel
Daniel Black - Miami Ohio: Surely. :)
Michael Janke (MnSCU): Reference book: Stefan Bente, Collaborative Enterprise Architecture
Daniel Black - Miami Ohio: Cool, Michael. I like a book that tries to figure out how to reimagine EA to comport with Agile/Lean/scrum methodologies that so many development teams are using.
Daniel Black - Miami Ohio: Michael: Our CIO this week put EA in terms of "changing the tires on a moving car". We can't start anew, green field, so we have to be nimble.
Piet Niederhausen (UWash): https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/itana/Investment+Value+Matrix
Jim Phelps: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/pages/viewpage.action?spaceKey=itana&title=ITANA+2015-2016+Program
Beth Schaefer: Thank you for the call today. It was very interesting and informative.