One of the key findings is that participants of the survey saw Enterprise Architecture as a capability that was core to their business and inherently part of their organization's crown jewels. However, given the daunting set of activities that most Enterprise Architecture functions have to execute today, the opportunity to work with ESPs and enlist them to execute some of these activities is real. In other words, some activities (the more tactical ones), can be outsourced to a strategic vendor partner.

Form an Architecture Governance Team
 

• A central team constituted with representation from stakeholders across the organization, should govern the planning, evolution and implementation of an Enterprise Architecture framework
   
• Architecture should be well thought through to meet the common goals of all stakeholders.
   
• The central team also should play a key role in establishing products, design and technology standards
  

During the past few weeks I got involved in an interesting activity: analysis and review of responses to the 2008 Enterprise Architecture survey that Infosys has been conducting annually for the past few years.
 
This year, we invited technology leaders from our client base and the global IT community to participate. 207 respondents from a cross-section of industry verticals, geographies and organizational sizes completed a web questionnaire of 24 detailed questions.  A preliminary analysis of the results indicates a few trends, including:

• Enterprise Architecture is enabling business transformation [Does this surprise me?]
• EA practices continue to mature with increasing use of metrics and processes [Again no surprises on this front]
• Outsourcing of activities focused at Enterprise Architecture is an opportunity that most EA teams have not seriously considered [Now, this is interesting]

In my last post, I talked about the movie The 300 Spartans and the lessons it held for Architects about doing the right thing, courage under fire, looking for alternatives etc.

My Cousin Vinny (Year of Release: 1992; Director: Jonathan Lynn; Our Architect: Vincent Gambini, played by Joe Pesci; Architect's Character: Lawyer handling his first case for his cousin).

‘My Cousin Vinny’ is the story of a lawyer who finds himself defending his first cousin on the charges of first degree murder in his first ever trial. He has no experience as a lawyer and has never even attended the court as a lawyer, is totally unaware of the process or the protocol. He learns on the fly, makes silly mistakes on his first case, is excited by the trivial stuff, but makes a solid come back using his fundamental skills and saves his cousin from an almost certain seat on the electric chair.

Current issue of the New Scientist magazine has a very interesting cover story on “Seven reasons why people hate reason”.  Now, that is a guide I would have loved to have alongside during some rather difficult stakeholder engagements, when I couldn’t stop thinking “If only they could be reasonable…”.

In my last post, I talked about the movie Swades and the lessons it held for Architects about giving back in the form of teaching budding architects, publishing papers etc.

The 300 Spartans (Year of Release: 1962; Director: Rudolph Mate; Our Architect: King Leonidas, played by Richard Egan; Architect's Character: The Greek king of Sparta who is up against a stronger Persian army)

‘The 300 Spartans’ depicts the invasion of Greece by the Persian army and the role of King Leonidas, the king of Sparta, known for its proud, bold and courageous army. The story deals with a number of issues – the role of the senate, the mammoth scale of problem at hand and the values of a team, in this case of a state.

 A very common occurance is to use a lot of buzzwords.  I once encountered an architect who said "issue A and issue B are orthagonal".  He meant A and B are independent of each other.  Architecture patterns too - be they singletons or facades - can be confusing explanations to IT management and customers.

In my last post, I talked about the movie Padosan and the lessons it held for Architects about observation, analyzing the non-obvious, taking care of your team, knowing your priorities etc.

Swades (Year of Release: 2004; Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar; Our Architect: Mohan Bhargav, played by Shahrukh Khan; Architect's Character: A Music Director by profession, US-based research scientist with NASA, of Indian origin).

‘Swades’ is a story of Mohan Bhargav, a research scientist with NASA. He has Indian origin but is settled in the US with a nice job and comforts of life. He makes a trip to India to see his grandmother when leads him to a village. During this trip, he gets a firsthand experience of life in rural India and how far behind they have been left from the ‘progress’ made by towns of the world.

In my previous post, I talked about the extending role of Enterprise Architects at services firms into Marchitects. This ‘selling’ of architecture services is no different from what our peers in client organizations undertake too.

Enterprise Architects, many of whom report into a CIO/CTO organization are also under continual pressure to ensure that the organization derives an optimal ROI from their IT investments, which means they need to ‘sell’ the value of robust, scalable architecture, planning and roadmaps to their stakeholders, some of whom may be focused on the tactical: ensuring that the quarterly targets are met, budgets balanced and operational challenges addressed. Even the ‘strategic’ focus may sometime involve reacting to external trends (read between the lines: it is the economy, slowdown etc)

In my last post, I talked about the movie Remember the Titans and the lessons it held for Architects about leadership, change, how to get people from diverse backgrounds to work together etc.

Padosan (Year of Release: 1968; Director: Jyoti Swaroop; Our Architect: Guru, played by Kishore Kumar; Architect's Character: A Music Director by profession, Guru always has a solution for all problems and never lacks innovation)

This is one of my favorite movies. It is witty, sharp and outrageously comic. Our architect is the character of Guru (Vidyapathi) played by the legendary Kishore Kumar. Guru has a flock of 4 friends that he is really close to and is always available to them in the role of an advisor, a psychiatrist and above all a friend. He has solution for almost every problem that you can throw at him. Most of his solution look awkward, but they all work beautifully! The outline of this movie is how Guru helps his friend, Bhola (played by Sunil Dutt), who has no knowledge of music, to capture the heart of a dame, Bindu (played by Saira Banu), who is obsessed with music.

While reading Andrew Manning’s blog entry on “Enterprise Architects: Time for more job titles?”  I began thinking about a barbeque I attended at a friend's place few weeks ago where colleagues and peers had gathered. It was interesting to observe that folks who had gathered were finding it hard to pick on neutral topics beyond the day’s weather and the difficulty in maintaining the lawn, using the host’s backyard as a case-in-point. It was not hard to see why.  A few were from the ‘sales’ side of our business – account managers, engagement leaders and the like – and others from the consulting side - IT architects and consultants. And not surprisingly, it was the few Marchitectects in our midstwho were trying to find an icebreaker.

In my last post, I talked about the movie Lagaan and the lessons it held for Architects about selling ideas, negotiations, leading change etc.

‘Remember the Titans’ (Year of Release: 2000; Director: Boaz Yakin; Our Architect: Coach Boone, played by Denzel Washington; Architect's Character: Chief Coach of the first mixed race football team) is set against the time of segregation. Then the Government abolished segregated schools and gave the right to all students to enroll in any school. The movie focuses on one such school - T C Williams High School in Virginia which has been educating white students but has now opened up to black students too. There is an atmosphere of tension and apprehension on all sides. In the midst of all this turmoil, Coach Boone lands up as the head coach of the school’s new football team.