EA - Enterprise Architecture or Extreme Aggravation

- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys

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.

Continue reading "Role of an Architect: Lessons from the movies - Part 5" »

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- Mohan Babu K (cross posted from the Managing Offshore IT blog)

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)

Continue reading "Architecting Business Solutions vs. the Business of architecting technology solutions (continued)" »

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- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys

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.

Continue reading "Role of an Architect: Lessons from the movies - Part 4" »

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- Mohan Babu K (cross posted from the Managing Offshore IT blog)

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.

Continue reading "Architecting Business Solutions vs. the Business of architecting technology solutions" »

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- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys

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.

Continue reading "Role of an Architect: Lessons from the movies - Part 3" »

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- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys

In my previous post, I talked about Henry Fonda's role in 12 Angry Men and the lessons it held for an Enterprise Architect. Let us switch from Hollywood to Bollywood. Consider the movie Lagaan (Year of Release: 2001; Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar; Our Architect: Bhuwan, played by Aamir Khan; Architect's character: Peasant, captain of a novice cricket team).

Lagaan highlights some aspects of an Architect's job - selling ideas, negotiation, leading change etc.

Continue reading "Role of an Architect: Lessons from the movies - Part 2" »

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- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys

None of us are new to the entertainment value of movies. They can make us laugh, cry, ponder, put us to sleep, wake us up and can entertain. The use of movies for the purpose of education is not new either. In fact, there is a special genre of movies with educational values, meant for different audiences.

Recently, I was in a discussion with my mentor. We started talking about challenges faced by the new age architects. Gradually, the conversation drifted from these challenges to the amazing world of movies. Soon after that conversation, I was conducting some training sessions for budding architects. The opening act for this training was titled – ‘The Role of an Enterprise Architect’.  While preparing for that workshop, I related it back to the conversation about movies and what lessons can we architects learn from them

Movies (from Hollywood & Bollywood) can offer good lessons to architects and in general provide a good overview about role of an architect.

Continue reading "Role of an Architect: Lessons from the movies" »

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Wow, is the only way to start looking at the turnout in Orlando for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture (EA) Summit held last week (June  11 - 13). More so since all the participants braved the thunderstorms and weather to show up despite stranded flights. For myself, I decided to take matters into my own hands after an unscheduled landing in Tampa and drove down enjoying Florida’s wide lane freeways which seemed surprisingly dry given the stormy weather hours ago.

Back to the EA conference which mostly starred Gartner VPs and Analysts, the whole conference was about Business Architecture (BA), EBA, SOA and Information Architecture.

Continue reading "EA Coverage in Orlando (The Gartner EA Summit)" »

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Continue reading "The changing discipline of Enterprise Architecture" »

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- Mohan Babu K (cross posted from the Managing Offshore IT blog)

Many of my peers enjoy the privilege of being trusted advisors to clients we work with, though I guess this comes with a lot of responsibility too. I use the phrase with caution since in our industry misuse of terminologies are rampant. In a sense, the term ‘trusted advisor’ is akin to another concept of ‘thought leader:’ every technologist and consultant worth her/his salt wants to be in that position though many don’t have a clue of what it takes to be one, or even to continue down the path when closer to that utopian goal.

Case in point, I am on the road this week, traveling with a client team that is embarking on a large integration [SOA] initiative. As is to be expected, they have floated Request for Information (RFI) to software platform vendors and are in the process of continuing down a deeper technical evaluation.

Continue reading "Vendor Architects as Client’s Trusted Advisors" »

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Continue reading "Banking without Legacy" »

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- Sohrab Kakalia 

Reviewing sales or RFPs is not always the only way to check the pulse of the market. A subtle way to check the trends in the market is to look at the employment opportunities or jobs on offer in the market. In recent months there is a growing demand for hiring enterprise architects in many Fortune 500 companies. These firms are specifically looking for capability in assessing and driving large IT transformation or modernization across multiple applications.

Continue reading "Industry feels the pinch for transformation" »

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- Andrew Manning, Principal Architect, Infosys

I noticed a recent survey that showed a marked increase in the number of Enterprise Architects (EAs) over the past several years. A reflection, perhaps, of the increased awareness of the importance of the role; of pressures making architectural benefits more relevant than ever; and a broader use of  ‘Enterprise Architect’ (to cover: business architects, data architects, application architects, technical & infrastructure architects… as well as ‘solution’ architects working at program and project levels).

It started me thinking about whether the title ‘Enterprise Architect’ needs a bit of a makeover. The following are some of the titles that sprang to mind as I waited for a delayed flight: 

Continue reading "Enterprise Architects: Time for more job titles?" »

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