You know you’ve arrived when the SEI ask to post your video on their website – don’t you:)?
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/videos/bassonarchitects.cfm
Only problem is I’ll never know how many people watched it as a result:(!
I’m a master of complexity and this week’s been no exception! Here’s a brief account of my week …
Monday & Tuesday
To start off I held the first proper meeting of my new focus group, the Microsoft Partner Architect Advisory Council (MPAAC), which is comprised of 18 senior architects from our GSI partners. In truth, this was our second actual gathering after the group’s launch and audience with Steve Ballmer back in October, but it was the first chance to get the group together to talk through real issues! We met for two days of discussion at the Weston Manor near Oxford, on the topic of “Microsoft in Tier 1” and to be honest I’m still revelling from the incredible amount of openness and creativity that this meeting generated given that we’d only just got started as a group! I think all of us saw the power and influence that this group could have if it is allowed to develop. However, there is still much to be done and much to prove we can achieve but first the output needs consolidating and reports need writing!
As part of this meeting it was my great delight to be able to invite the great Roger Sessions, CEO of Objectwatch and long-time architectural thought leader to join us at MPAAC. He travelled over from the US and spent the entire two days with the group to share his thoughts on project failures and the rise of complexity. He took part in the workshops and was a great motivation to all that took part!
Wednesday
Not having totally abused Roger’s good faith I managed to convince him to take part in a series of 1:1 meetings with a selection of customers and partners through out the day. Starting at 9am we ran through to 6pm talking to people about IT complexity and how you need to take a quantifiable and repeatable approach to simplification. Complex problems do not have to lead to complex solutions!
The key thing for me with the process and methodology that Roger talks to is that is is inclusive and empowering. It ‘removes’ the ego and democratises the decision making process leading to a shared ownership of and responsibility for the resulting architectural design.
So, with many more hours left in the day it was off to Soho for a Twitter dinner with other UK architect thought leaders @CyberSal, @richardveryard, @seebird20 and @taotwit – great curry, great conversation, great network boost – I love Twitter!
For more detail on Complexity I thoroughly recommend Roger’s white paper on The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity.
Thursday
Ok, time for a step change. As a Microsoft Environmental Ambassador (yes – great role hey;)!), I been following the progress of the Government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan and am a member on several Intellect groups such as the data centre and software as a service groups (although the paper the latter group is diabolical and I refused to put my name to it;)). Today it was the turn of the Smart Grids and Smart Metering Group’s Conference in which it was hoped that we’d hear the Government’s response to the recent consultation process but unfortunately this did not happen! That said, it’s not a response that is easy to write I suppose! 47 million smart meters to be rolled out to every home by 2020, a rate of maybe 35,000 a week in a market that is highly competitive, deregulated and incredibly complex market of generators, suppliers, distributors and add to this meter operators. Add to this the issues of duel fuel v separate electricity, gas and Water supplies, consumer choice, security of data, privacy of consumer (do you want your supplier to know when you put on the kettle or take a bath?), a lack of agreed standard protocols then you have a recipe for complexity the like of which was only last seen with the NHS Porgramme for IT originally estimated at £2.3 billion over 3 years by 2007 it costs were estimated at being in excess of £20 billion. the problem this down is that we’re not just playing with human health we’re playing with planetary health!
Here’s an interesting picture of a possible future which I found kind of fun … With Wind generation it is not beyond reality that energy could be free at certain points of a day and people incentivised to use energy:)! Well we can dream hey!
Top graph shows Energy production based on wind generation using UK wind speeds in 2008 (I think) against projected number of wind generators in 2030.
Bottom Graph shows market cost of this energy – when it blows the cost comes down:)!
Friday
So it’s back home on Friday and it’s catch up time; writing this blog; doing some internal training that’s due now; avoiding looking at expenses and editing down an interview I did with Roger back in October in NY which I have promised a million times to publish – fingers!
Ok that was this week … what am I up to next week … ah that’s right …
A session on the Implications of Cloud at the Business Cloud Summit on Wednesday and a session or two at the Architect Forum in the North with Black Marble on Thursday – a quiet week then … so maybe I can focus on some of the projects I’m meant to be delivering before Christmas:)!
 | Angela Yochem is an executive architect with a leading multinational organisation and an IASA fellow. Her public role and passion for architecture is incredible but it is her clear business focused approach that really sets her apart from the rest.
We constantly strive to align more closely with the Business to understand how we can move from servant to innovator. Angela has succeeded in going much further and is I would argue an integral part of the success of the business for which she works.
There is much we can learn from Angela and this interview only just touches the surface - thankfully Angela and people like her are open to continuing that conversation! |
Well, maybe they don’t actually ‘love’ the cloud but according to the research by MWD Advisors in partnership with the IASA it appears that they are cautiously optimistic which came as quite a surprise.
 | Neil, Research Director from MWD talked to me recently about their involvement with IASA and what they have started to uncover in terms of the value of architects in delivering “sustainable business value from IT investment”. He argues that it’s one of the big questions out there and architects are key in guiding the right levels of investment. The second half reveals some of the early findings of their research with IASA into the architects view on cloud computing which as I mentioned earlier were pleasantly surprising and encouraging given the need on business to continually reduce the costs of IT while still innovating in line with business needs. |
 | Talking Architects is a UK channel 9 series that I’ve just launched to reach out to prominent people within the Industry to discuss the issues that architects face.
If you think I should talk to you or to anyone you know especially in the UK then drop me a line! |
 | First up is Len Bass, co-author of Software Architecture in Practice and longstanding member of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI)whom I managed to talk to at the recent IASA ITARC conference in NY. Quality Attributes (Non-functional requirements) as first class citizens of a project? Too far fetched? Len, thinks he has an answer. |
been out a while but here’s a great interview* between Dave Gristwood and Dave Chappell on the value of Azure in comparison with other cloud platforms like AWS, Google AppEngine and Force.com well worth the time to watch!
* Ok, so when I say great video – I did the filming so am to blame for the “headless” shots and crass product placement!
Many thanks to everyone who took part in the Architect Forum on the 25th, and I mean everyone – I haven’t witnessed such a vocal audience in some time – really great mind share all round.
Here’s all the links to slides that were used and I hope to have videos edited before too long!
| Articulating the value of Cloud Computing
Neil Ward-Dutton, Research Director, MWD Advisors Before we can talk about value and selling the idea to the business, we have to be clear what we’re talking about! What is Cloud? From here we can start to understand the business case and scenarios and look at the entry points for enterprise investment. | |
Cloud Computing – What’s the Point?
Dave Coplin, Service Line Architect, Microsoft Ltd
Cloud Computing is being positioned as the future of the IT Industry, yet we collectively seem to be unsure on what it actually is and, more importantly, how to get from here to there. This session will attempt to reconnect us all with the longer term reasons on why the cloud is not just important but fundamental to the kind of transformation we are looking technology to provide the way we live, work and play.
| |
Architectural considerations for BPOS
Andrew Jones, Practice Director, CSC
The Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) is a set of hosted messaging and collaboration solutions that currently include Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. This is the first wave of business focused finished (or SaaS) services from Microsoft extending the traditional on-premise model. On the surface the model appears simple but what are the considerations one must make in moving to a hosted model? What do you do about identity integration? How can you extend and customise the service? How do you provision the service and migrate? Is this a one way trip? How do you share services that are on-premise with those that are hosted? These are just some of the questions you need to ask as you peel off the label and start to look inside. In this session we will look at the key architectural considerations for moving to a BPOS solution, but also reflect on the fact that these can be converted to a general form and applied in any scenario where one is looking at a choice between software and service. | |
Windows Azure Overview
Dave Gristwood, Architect, Microsoft Ltd
There is a load of fuzz around Cloud, but in reality the actual implementations of cloud platforms are quite simple to describe and define. Azure is no different and this session attempts to provide a clear overview of Azure within 20 mins! | |
Patterns for Cloud Computing
Simon Guest, Senior Director of Technical Strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group, Microsoft Corp
Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should you be moving? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? Based on real-world scenarios, this session explores a set of pattern for applications that best take advantage of the cloud, together with working examples on the Windows Azure platform. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start. | |
Last night was the UK IASA AGM which proved to be a great success and I am delighted to welcome 4 new faces to the IASA leadership committee as a result.
We also took time to review the IASA plans to launch certification which were also well received by the group. So here's to an exciting year ahead and in delivering some really tangible value to our members!
Please join me in welcoming the returning and new members of the IASA leadership team:
- Matt Deacon, returned as Chair
- Eoin Woods, returned as Treasurer
- Chris Cooper-Bland, returned as Education Officer
- Paul Cavanagh, returned as Committee Member
- Rupert Brown, elected as Committee Member
- Luke Boucher elected as Committee Member
- Rabih Bashroushelected as Committee Member
- Al-Rasheed Amzartelected as Committee Member
- Srikanthan Muthia Govindaraj elected as Committee Member
For those that are members here's the Link to AGM documentation including minutes
It is so often the case that integration is a secondary concern and along with identity, audit/logging and reporting it ends way below the fadistic significance of the UX in driving developer time (and cost). Not that I want to decry the importance of UX of course – user adoption and therefore project success is often most measured on this basis, well, initially at any rate – the significance of this belies another story of why projects fail but let’s return to integration or the ‘lines’.
Many an architectural description reaches the level of a functional viewpoint and many get no further as the rapid speed of agile/iterative (explorative) development takes precedence and the architectural description fails to keep pace. However, the functional definition often consisting of a “boxes and lines” metaphor does surprisingly retains much of its value, often providing the only overarching description of the system as a whole. But interestingly, while the “boxes” draw all the attention it is in the “lines” where the majority of the value can be found if you look. These are the primary points of integration; these define the service boundaries; the contracts by which the system communicates across its layers and tiers and across system boundaries. This is integration architecture and this is what I mean by “architecting for the lines”.
At a different level of scale I was much heartened by the following posting by Davey Winder who listed the Gartner “top 10 enterprise architecture mistakes” – most are obvious (and why shouldn’t they be) but number 8 “Architecting the ‘Boxes’ Only” was where it reawakened the dormant thoughts in my mind!
So combining other thoughts (blog posts) my first thought for the day is:
“Mind the Architectural Gaps and Architect for the lines”:)!!!
The other question I had, which is one I have when ever I read or make a list myself was “are these all really different? Am I just repeating myself with different words?”. So going through the list again I think that 2,3,6,7 and 10 are all aspects of the same thing (you could even include 1 here too and I will). Plain and simply this is about communication. That leaves 4,5,8 and 9 these two are similar in nature and relate to the actual approach or execution (you could add in 1 here but I wont) so plain and simple this is about process.
So in my overly simplistic view of the world and because I can only remember a maximum of 3 things (and only having 2 is a bonus) I’d say (and here’s my second quote of the day):
“EA projects suffer primarily due to a lack of communication and poor processes.”
For reference here’s the full list as posted on Davey’s site:
1.The Wrong Lead Architect: Gartner identified the single biggest EA problem as a chief architect who is an ineffective leader. He or she may understand EA well but has ineffective leadership skills that even a good organisational structure and staffing levels cannot overcome. Gartner recommends that such a lead architect be replaced by someone with strong ‘soft’ skills such as enthusiasm, communication and passion, as well as being well respected and strategically minded.
2.Insufficient Stakeholder Understanding and Support: This happens when employees outside the EA team don’t participate in the EA programme, EA content is not used in projects and management questions its value. Gartner’s solution is to make EA education and communication a top priority to secure executive-team sponsorship. “The key is to ‘sell’ first and architect later,” said Mr Bittler.
3.Not Engaging the Business People: When IT and business goals are not aligned, resultant problems include non-technical people trying to make technical decisions while enterprise architects become too reactionary and tactical in response to projects. To overcome this, Gartner recommends that enterprise architects get involved in the development of the business context and engage jointly with other employees in the business architecture.
4.Doing Only Technical Domain-Level Architecture: This dated EA approach is still in use in some organisations and is even narrower in scope than technical architecture. Holistic EA best-practice is much broader as it includes business, information and solutions architecture.
5.Doing Current-State EA First: Successful EA provides prescriptive guidance but current-state EA does not, so it delays delivery of EA value and hinders the creation of good future-state EA. “The temptation is often to do the easy – current-state – EA first,” said Mr Bittler. “Instead, establish the business context and then focus first on future-state EA.”
6.The EA Group Does Most of the Architecting: This is a pitfall because the EA content is typically off the mark as it was not informed by those on the business side. There is also consequently no buy-in for the EA. The primary job of architects is to lead the EA process rather than impose EA content on the organisation. They should form virtual teams to create content and seek consensus on the content.
7.Not Measuring and Not Communicating the Impact: The value of EA is often indirect, so it may not be obvious to everyone in the organisation. This then exposes the EA programme to risk of failure. Gartner recommends that enterprise architects create a slide to demonstrate each success story of EA applied to a project. They should include measurement and documentation of EA in the programme plan.
8.Architecting the ‘Boxes’ Only: Enabling better business agility and integration is key but architecting standards for the ‘boxes’ (business units) in process, information, technical and solutions models doesn’t address this. Integration and interoperability standards are high EA priorities and must account for more than just technical architecture. Architects should focus more on the links between the boxes.
9.Not Establishing Effective EA Governance Early: Enterprise architects must resist the temptation to wait for more architecture content before setting governance processes and instead develop content and governance in parallel.
10.Not Spending Enough Time on Communications: Key messages about EA are not intuitively obvious, so enterprise architects must work to educate the business. It is critical that organisations develop and execute an EA communications plan with messages tailored to each audience.
Short notice, but definitely worth coming too (places limited to 90). The architect forum on the 25th September at Cardinal Place, London will look at cloud from the architects perspective, looking at the opportunities and challenges that enterprises are facing.
To register go here
Given that I had Simon Guest, Senior Director of Technical Strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft over I felt I had to get something together for us to talk with him. Here’s some of the key sessions (so far) – I’m still building out the afternoon piece that will drill down on Azure (of course) and will be a great pre-PDC teaser giving us insight in what is to come later this year!
Articulating the value of Cloud Computing
Neil Ward-Dutton, Research Director, MWD Advisors
Before we can talk about value and selling the idea to the business, we have to be clear what we’re talking about! What is Cloud? From here we can start to understand the business case and scenarios and look at the entry points for enterprise investment.
Cloud Computing – What’s the Point?
Dave Coplin, Service Line Architect, Microsoft Ltd
Cloud Computing is being positioned as the future of the IT Industry, yet we collectively seem to be unsure on what it actually is and, more importantly, how to get from here to there. This session will attempt to reconnect us all with the longer term reasons on why the cloud is not just important but fundamental to the kind of transformation we are looking technology to provide the way we live, work and play.
Patterns for Cloud Computing
Simon Guest, Senior Director of Technical Strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group, Microsoft Corp
Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should you be moving? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? Based on real-world scenarios, this session explores a set of pattern for applications that best take advantage of the cloud, together with working examples on the Windows Azure platform. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.
Does the Cloud need an Identity?
Steve Plank, Identity Architect, Microsoft
The internet was born without an Identity and although much effort has been made to develop standards still 90% of Internet commerce takes place behind a flimsy username/password combination. Now we are being asked to consider transporting the most mission critical enterprise processes out on to the cloud but the old ways of securing these transactions are clearly not going to stand up to scrutiny. It is clear that security and privacy are taking centre stage and with it the need for a clear architectural strategy around Identity is critical. This session will discuss the opportunities and approaches to making identity central to the enterprise agenda.
Lunch
Microsoft in the Clouds?
Drill down on key Microsoft Cloud investments.
So loads of people looked at my last post on this subject but few actually decided to respond to the poll:(. So here’s v2 – to register your opinion is now only a click away …. go on:)!
Following on from my "
mind the architect gap" posting the other day we've put up a quick poll on the
UK IASA portal to test opinion. Go and have a look and remember if you're a practising architect then have you joined IASA yet?
A final thought before the weekend …
I received the 2009 Standish CHAOS report from a colleague the other day that shows yet another jump in project failure rates. I often refer to Standish in my presentations so decided to look at the trends from 1994 when Standish launched their CHAOS report. Thankfully, before getting too far I had the good fortune of finding this post from Jorge Dominquez who had already compiled the following table.
| | 1994 | 1996 | 1998 | 2000 | 2002 | 2004 | 2006 | 2009 |
| Successful | 16% | 27% | 26% | 28% | 34% | 29% | 35% | 32% |
| Challenged | 53% | 33% | 46% | 49% | 51% | 53% | 46% | 44% |
| Failed | 31% | 40% | 28% | 23% | 15% | 18% | 19% | 24% |
Jorge concludes that project success is a ‘little worse than in 2006' but definitely better than 1994’ and suggests some reasons for this such as better project management (but he would say that;)). However, I think this conclusion misses an important and significant trend.
I’ve plotted this in the following graph that really illustrates the situation quite neatly. Project failure has consistently increased since 2002 while successes have in reality effectively plateaud overall. Looking at challenged projects, these appear to be reducing and almost mirror the inverse of increase failures suggesting if anything that we might be just getting better at dropping the axe on ailing projects rather than letting them die a long and lingering death through underachievement.
The other thing Jorge notes which I tend to agree with although have little empirical evidence for other than observation is that “complexity and environments have increased while the time to deliver has been reduced”. If you think about it complexity continues to increase but the tools we use have barely really changed in comparison. Add to this shortening timelines would result in more black and white project successes or project failures – there is little point in delivering something that is challenged!
Here’s a couple of slides from a deck I used back in 2007 that illustrates this point quite neatly …
Finally after much angst the breakout sessions from AIC09 are now live
here!
Quick note before going on leave to make sure you are aware of the following cloud events in Newcastle on the 29th July.
Both Simon Davies and I will be there but if that's not enough then there will be loads of other great talks on ...
CloudSeminar
How 'the cloud' can help your IT operation
Date: Wednesday 29 July
Venue: Newcastle University
Time: 1pm-5.30pm
Cost: £10 (free to Codeworks Connect members)
For more information and to book your place go to http://www.amiando.com/CloudSeminar.html
CloudCamp
Venue: The Beehive, Newcastle University
Times: 18.00 - 21.30
Cost: Free
To register please go to: www.cloudcamp.com/north-east-england2
