My name is Dr. Stefan Malich and I devote myself to the disciplines of enterprise and software architecture. I started my career as a freelance IT consultant and software developer. In 2001 I joined the global management consulting company Accenture. Within the consulting business I developed many architectures and led several architecture teams mainly in whole sale, the financial services and energy industry. In a sabbatical leave I was engaged
at the Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems and worked on a personal PhD research project which dealt with pattern-based architectural knowledge. After finishing my doctoral thesis I’ve focused on enterprise architectures and worked on several enterprise architecture projects within the financial services and energy industry. I led projects to build up or enhance enterprise architecture capabilities and gained explicit knowledge of the various aspects of an enterprise architecture capability (processes, models, governance, roles and functions, tools, maturity models etc.).
Lately I’m looking into the change management aspects of the enterprise architecture management discipline and that’s what this blog is all about.
My observations led to the thought that – especially when building or enhancing an enterprise architecture capability – enterprise architecture management is even more than e.g. staffing an enterprise architecture team, defining an EA meta model and deploying an EA tool. It is about developing
an EA team with the right skills, building up the relevant architectural knowledge and positioning the results of the EA team for use within the company. In many companies this situation leads to a fundamental change in the way it is concerned with enterprise and software architectures. Existing capabilities, goals, skill sets, processes, governance and organizational structures etc. are questioned and major change transformations are needed to build up or enhance the enterprise architecture capability.
This blog will adress the challenges of such an architectural change transformation. Currently I think of the following questions that guide my work:
- To develop an EA team with the right skills and relevant architectural knowledge you need know the state of art of the enterprise and software architecture disciplines. You do not want reinvent the wheel, right? This blog already contains a pretty large list with links and knowledge sources covering enterprise architecture, software architecture and other topics. Of course this list is not exhaustive but to my mind all entries are valuable.
- How do you effectively build up architectural knowledge? With regard to the architecture itself patterns and ‘best practices’ are a proven approaches. Take a look at the Patterns and Good Practices page. But how do you build up knowledge concerning the enterprise architecture management capability (e.g. processes, models, governance, roles and functions, tools)?
- What is the state of the art of the change management discipline? What can we learn and reuse from this discipline?
If you interested in this challenges revist this blog, subscribe to it or contact me directly.