Just a short post re: the “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” event I presented at last week for the Birmingham Branch of the BCS.

Pleased to say that the event went very well, with a very good turn out, and I was told that it was almost twice the size of the average group meeting and the largest for the preceding year.

Sadly I only presented a few slides, although I spoke for almost two hours, and I won’t be posting them in the short term for two reasons, first, there were only a few slides with no electronically captured notes, and second, I have a couple more presentations and talks to give on the topic, and this material will be the basis for them (more details below).

Basically the areas I covered, without giving too much away, were:

1. What is Enterprise Architecture ?

• Public Definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA)
• My Definition of EA (as a practitioner)
• An overview of the major EA frameworks
• A comparative analysis of the major EA Framework variants, with particular attention to Zachman model (and the ZFEA) and the Open Group’s TOGAF
• The relationship of EA to other technical architecture disciplines (Application Architecture, Systems / Infrastructure Architecture and Solution Architecture)
• The relationship between EA and other major “Macro IT” initiatives, such as ITIL, Cobit, CMM, etc.

• A large Utility company: and how an EA team led it’s business into a £70 Million black hole, and what we had to do to “rescue” the situation
• A large Government department: and how EA can enable the definition of SOA Roadmaps and Transformation plans
• A large Government organisation: and how getting the right EA Governance structure is key to ensuring the success of the overall IT change programme

• A variety of recommendations when implementing and governing EA programmes

• An open session

The responses to the event were very positive, Howard Hewitt, Senior Consultant at Syntaxnet kindly dropped me an email after the event saying:

“Just a quick note to thank you for the talk in Birmingham on Monday night. It was very informative and useful.”

Whilst another comment sent in by email was:

“I enjoyed your presentation on Enterprise Architecture, thanks. I thought it provided a pragmatic view; something sorely lacking within the world of IT!”

My friend, and the person who taught me the C programming language many years ago, Walter Milner, said:

“Gadzooks!”, to go back a further century. On behalf of the BCS, thanks Wayne.

And it was especially nice to see Micheal Flaherty, with whom I worked on the 1901 census website, at the event too.

As to the upcoming events which I’ll be presenting the next iteration of this material, they should be another BCS event, an IET event, and this year’s European leg of the Open Group’s “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2008”.

Reader’s of this blog may be aware this will be my third year presenting for the Open Group on Enterprise Architecture, having presented at the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2007” in Paris, and the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2006” in London).

More details on these upcoming events as I get further confirmations, dates, locations and times.

I’ll be presenting three Enterprise Architecture case studies on Monday at a joint Birmingham BCS Branch and Professional Institute Network West Midlands (PIN WM) event called “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture”.

The event, 6:00pm for 6:30pm until 8:30pm, on Monday the 18th of February, 2008, is being held in the Trophy Suite of the Tally Ho Sports & Conference Centre (Pershore Road, Birmingham, B5 7RN, next to the Police Training College).

Your welcome to come along and see me present and talk on the subject, and if you do come along because of reading this blog entry then make sure you say “Hello”.

There’s more information on the Birmingham BCS Branch event page “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” (and is also listed with PIN WM too).

There’s a free buffet available from 6pm. Please contact Walter Milner (w.w.milner-AT-bham.ac-DOT-uk) if you intend to be present, so the amount of food and drink for the buffet can be planned.

For those not familiar with Enterprise Architecture, my current definition is:

Enterprise Architecture is a technical discipline concerned with gaining a contextual understanding of an IT estate, so that IT estate can be described, communicated, managed, and planned for.

N.B. Don’t be overtly concerned with the use of the word ‘contextual’ here, substitute ‘High Level’ or ‘Big Picture’ if that feels more comfortable.

Large (and, increasingly, smaller) enterprises have embraced Enterprise Architecture as a key tool to interpret and strategically manage the complexity of their IT estates, and it’s not surprising that many of them have assembled large teams and spent many millions of pounds to achieve an ‘Enterprise Architecture’.

These case studies explore my experiences with Enterprise Architecture in three major customer engagements, including an Enterprise Architecture team which led its company into a 70+ million pound ‘pitfall’, the use of Enterprise Architecture to define a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and an example of how much Enterprise Architecture is about achieving the proper Governance model.

Look forward to seeing you there…