Gabriel Morgan

Sharing experience as an Enterprise Architect, Business Strategist, Business Performance Manager, Business Architect and Solution Architect. Twitter:@Gabriel_Morgan

Mastering Strategic Planning Through Concepts

Chess Grandmasters master the application of concepts and apply them to situations. I study chess...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 11/12/2013

Inspiration As A Strategy

As you may have heard, Forbes magazine published their America's Top 25 Most Inspiring Companies...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/07/2013

Engineer strategic planning to align your company. Don't reverse-engineer another company's strategic plan.

My engineering background encourages me automate processes. My architect experience encourages me to...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/07/2013

The Business Architect, Business Performance Manager, Business Strategy Manager, Business Planner Job Description

I’ve written several job descriptions for Business Architect, Business Performance Manager,...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 08/19/2013

Top Strategy and Planning Lessons Learned

I’ve spent a few years designing and facilitating strategy and planning processes (aka...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/30/2013

The Big 8 Business Objectives

Welcome to financial year 2014! Whew! July marks the new financial year and for some of us, the end...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/19/2013

Business Performance Management, the next big thing…again

We all possess the gene to want to solve problems when faced with them. It’s human nature....

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 11/18/2012

The Planning Paradox

One of my uncle’s favorite jokes goes like this: Greg: “Hey Gabriel, say to me ‘what’s the most...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 11/14/2012

Business Architect Skills Assessment

Six years ago I posted a blog article called Solution Architect Skills Idea. At the time, I was a...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 11/12/2012

How do you reward failure?

I was a participant in a recent survey facilitated by the Corporate Executive Board’s...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/23/2012

Enterprise Architecture: First stop, Building Architecture, then on to a Science!

The Building Architecture industry is frustrated with IT Architecture. There is so much interest...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/15/2012

IT Organizations, like any Business Support Organization, Deliver Business Value

As one traverses organizations in a company, the further you get from a business group responsible...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/09/2012

Business Architecture is Business Performance Management with Engineering Rigor

I’ve been performing a Business Architect role within the Enterprise Architecture function...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 06/26/2012

Strategically Federating IT

IT must rethink how to deliver on its promise to enable the business. IT-centric efforts are falling...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 06/09/2011

Strategy and Planning Service as an Enterprise Architecture Offering

As mentioned in a previous post, I announced that our Enterprise Architecture team has made some...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 02/03/2011

Effective Enterprise Roadmaps are designed to make change and track ‘effect’

I’ve come to some interesting conclusions regarding Roadmaps that I thought might be...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 02/01/2011

A Breakthrough: Maturing EA to be a Catalyst to Transform the Company

It’s time to rethink enterprise architecture people. Well, at least here in Microsoft IT’s...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/28/2010

Be GREAT !

Do you ever find yourself in the situation where you can be of help in several very different...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/15/2010

Managing MSIT’s Enterprise Platform Portfolio

I have the fortunate opportunity to manage the Enterprise Platform portfolio for Microsoft IT and...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 04/20/2010

Positive and Negative behaviors to look out for in Enterprise Architects

I’ve been fortunate to be in a position as a trusted advisor assess individuals during...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 03/29/2010

Service Provider Paradigm Shift for Enterprise Architecture Teams

I recently had the opportunity to share an idea with a group of enterprise-level Architects and...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 03/29/2010

Business Software Platforms are not Strategic

I want to share an idea that occurred to me and some of my colleagues, Dave Langer in particular,...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 08/04/2009

Inappropriately comparing Building Architecture and Software Architecture

Mike Walker wrote a great little article describing that it is largely inappropriate to compare...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 03/02/2009

Valuing the Undervalued Solution Model

Modeling helps improve the success of delivering a high-quality solution A primary responsibility of...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 06/28/2008

Tips for gaining adoption

I began writing a quick response to Erik’s question in this blog about Architect’s high-order bit is...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 06/06/2008

SaaS Service Offerings redefine what's in a product

As I continue my work on my little nook of Microsoft's S+S business strategy, the team I work with...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 01/29/2008

Customer 2.0 is here and she has a major impact on business models and system architecture

One of the major tasks on my plate is understanding the impact of business systems to support the...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 11/18/2007

SWABOK, Archipedia, Uber Architecture Framework, xyz?

Nick Malik wrote blog post "The culture of art vs. the culture of engineering" that described the...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/09/2007

Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the Enterprise

I'm noticing a lot of great improvements in Enterprise Architecture Frameworks, namely FEAF, TOGAF,...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 09/28/2007

Adoption, rather than Architecture, is the high order bit for Architects

Over the years I've noticed a strange phenomenon, sometimes the most logical decision isn't the...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 09/26/2007

Enterprise Architect vs Solution Architect

What exactly is an Enterprise Architect versus a Solution Architect? I'd like to chat about the...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 09/02/2007

Skills from different experiences - Well rounded is King

I currently sit in Microsoft IT and get to share experiences and learn with some of the most...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 08/31/2007

Enterprise Architecture Mapping Artifacts - They are very powerful so be very, very careful

I wrote a blog (found here) describing the relationship from Business Strategy to other Business...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 08/16/2007

Traceability from Biz Strategy to Application to Data to Hardware...

Recently, I’ve had a number of conversations with folks regarding concepts at the enterprise-level...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/31/2007

Business analysis for 'Consuming' SaaS Services

In a previous blog, I posted some considerations to assist analyzing a business for opportunities to...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/19/2007

Business analysis for 'Providing' SaaS Services

Should a business offer a SaaS product? Hmmm, I think it might if all the right peices are there....

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/18/2007

Top-down, Bottom-up...but what is the 'Middle'?

There was a recent conversation between several folks on the topic of what Top-down is versus what...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/13/2007

SaaS is not just SOA, S+S and Web 2.0

Microsoft has defined SaaS as "Software deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 07/06/2007

'Capability' - the micro-trendy word on its way to failure unless...

Is it just me or is the word ‘capability’ becoming a micro-trendy word and losing its meaning? I...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 03/31/2007

Implementing System Quality Attributes

I recently participated in an IASA initiative to document skills needed by Software Architects. I...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 03/20/2007

Successful enterprise systems that deliver Agility

Another idea to improve system quality … I’ve contributed to the delivery of several enterprise...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 11/02/2006

Solution Architect Skills Assessment Idea

I’d like to talk about another idea I have for improving system architecture which is growing...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/20/2006

System Design Process thought...

I wanted to follow up a note I mentioned in a previous blog I wrote on how to Manage System Quality...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/12/2006

System Quality Attribute Plan

There are several things that architects do when building and delivering solutions but one of the...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/03/2006

Design for Flexibility

First of all, let’s level set on the definition of system Flexibility. I quite like M. Barbacci’s...

Author: Gabriel Morgan Date: 10/03/2006