Why Enterprise Architecture – Animation

This YouTube video has proven to be useful to explain to organisations why Enterprise Architecture is useful. Description from the YouTube page:

Meet Michael, he works at a your company. He needs support from IT to do his job, so they cater to his wishes. But Michael is not alone and many Michaels later a Hairball Architecture will grow unless you use Enterprise Architecture (EA) to prevent that. EA is not just about some guidelines and principles, it is a process that makes sure the constant changes that inevitably happen in your landscape are good for your company as a whole and over time, not just good for the problem at hand.

The animation and narrative was created by T36 (http://www.t36.eu/) based on interviews with me.

Video | Posted on April 19, 2013 by | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Mapping #BPMN and #ArchiMate: About BPMN’s ‘Pool’

Posted on March 29, 2013 by

Earlier, I wrote about an ongoing attempt to map #BPMN to #ArchiMate. Now that some time has passed, we have come to a solution, though at this stage it is not yet 100% complete. In a couple of posts, I want to explain what the solution is, and also a bit on what the stumbling blocks to a solution were. In this post, I discuss one of the important issues: BPMN’s Pools and Processes.  Continue reading →

Posted in Discussing BPMN, Using BPMN | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

#ArchiMate #OmniGraffle Stencils GW-Style

Posted on February 15, 2013 by

As my drawing tool for free model-drawing is OmniGraffle on the Mac (which, I might add is an extremely good and intelligent free model-drawing program). There are ArchiMate 2.0 stencils (to be found on GraffleTopia) but they have the layered-color setup. So, I created by own set of OmniGraffle stencils for ArchiMate 2.0. Continue reading →

Posted in Using ArchiMate | Tagged | 2 Comments

Mapping #BPMN and #ArchiMate, first thoughts

Posted on February 9, 2013 by

ArchiMate is an open standard for modeling Enterprise Architecture. It can be used in many ways. One of these is a good Current State Architecture description: your current landscape of business and IT, coherently modeled with enough detail to be usable for analysis. At the business layer however, there is generally need for more precise and detailed description of what is going on than what ArchiMate can offer. Here, we enter the domain of Business Process Modeling. Continue reading →

Posted in Discussing ArchiMate, Discussing BPMN, Using ArchiMate, Using BPMN | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Good International Print Shop for Professional Prints

Posted on January 27, 2013 by

One licensee informed me of a good and affordable print shop for printing the Mastering ArchiMate book in a professional form (so, edge-to-edge, full color, spiral bound). It is Pixart Printing and he gave me the correct settings which I pass on here.

Continue reading →

Posted in Mastering ArchiMate | Leave a comment

Abstraction versus Precision in ArchiMate

Posted on January 17, 2013 by

We architects love abstraction. Abstraction makes the nitty gritty and complex details disappear. Abstraction makes the unmanageable manageable. Our business colleagues also love it when we produce abstractions. It makes our end products easier to digest. In ArchiMate, you can do both, which means that — apart from the precision-like modeling that you for instance do when building ‘current-state’ descriptive models — you can use the ArchiMate language in a more ‘loose’ setup, e.g. when designing a landscape top-down. Continue reading →

Posted in Discussing ArchiMate, Mastering ArchiMate, Using ArchiMate | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Missing from ArchiMate: (Business) Capability?

Posted on December 27, 2012 by

One of the most often heard complaints about ArchiMate is that the concept Capability is missing. People often use ArchiMate’s Business Function for Capability as it comes closest. Are they right? And: What is ‘Capability’ and how should we model it in ArchiMate? Continue reading →

Posted in Discussing ArchiMate | Tagged | 3 Comments