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.