Showing posts with label Target. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Target. Show all posts

July 13, 2023

Target Escalator

(Credit Video: Andy Blumenthal)
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February 16, 2023

Bathroom Etiquette

Ladies and gentlemen.

Keep this bathroom clean!  ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)


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October 2, 2017

From North Korean ICBMs to the Las Vegas Mass Shooter

What do North Korean ICBMs and the Las Vegas mass shooter have in common?

They both target the masses for the maximum fatality count.

North Korea was shown targeting a nuclear attack on major U.S. cities--including San Diego, Austin, Washington DC, and the islands of Hawaii. 

The Las Vegas shooter last night targeted a concert crowded with fans to let loose his automatic rifle killing at least 59 and wounding 527 in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

How about the Boston Marathon bomber that killed three and wounded 260 at the crowded finish line?  

We are living in dangerous, dangerous times. 

And being in a crowd can seriously get you killed. 

Honestly, does it take a genius or a madman to target a large gathering to inflict great pain on the enemy?

Honestly, who hasn't wondered why we don't target the terrorists groups and rogue terror nation states--whether Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Al-Qaeda or Axis of Evil Iran and North Korea--when their militants are violently rallying, burning the American flag, chanting death to the USA, and boldly and defiantly raising their assault rifles high into the air. 

Why do we prefer to go after onesies-twosies in a virtual never ending battle to try and stop the terrorists of the day before they hit our cities and people again, when instead we can take out the evil bunch in more or less one fell swoop and send a no nonsense deterrent message. 

Are we too moralistic to do it to them before they do it to us and we have hundreds of thousands or millions of dead?

I'm not suggesting hitting innocent civilians, but how about an armed, military parade with tanks and missiles or a bunch of crazed terrorists just building up their gumption to do their next dirty massacre against masses of innocent men, women, and children.

The bad guys aren't asking any questions before they hit the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or London or Paris or Tokyo or Jerusalem with guns, knives, bombs, vehicular attacks or even attempted WMD--maybe we shouldn't ask too many questions before we invoke "fire and fury" on their evil ranks and protect our own once and for all. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to JTF News)
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August 25, 2017

Ever Feel Like You're Target Practice

Thought this was really spot on.

The knives get sharpened and readied. 

At some point, they come flying out of nowhere. 

Often, from all directions at the same time.  

When it rains, it pours. 

Some people latch on to the opportunity to try and make a kill. 

You do your best to duck this way and that and survive the onslaught.

Hopefully, you were adequately prepared. 

The big question is--can you hold unto your cheese? 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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December 10, 2016

{Saving Us From DC Ground Zero}

One well-placed nuclear suitcase bomb or nuclear ballistic missile strike on DC and say goodbye to virtually the entire hub of the Federal government. 

As of 2014, there are over 4.2 million federal employees (2.7M in the civilian agencies and 1.5M in the military). 

Over 500K are located in the DC, MD, VA tristate area. 

But it's not just the numbers, it's that the headquarters of all the major government agencies are located here. 

While, of course, there are backup sites, and emergency doomsday sites like Mount Weather (48 miles from DC), there is no telling how much advance notice, if any we would have, and who would escape and survive a deadly blow to our capital region. 

And it could be a radiological, chemical, biological, or nuclear (RCBN) attack that does us in...whether from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or other diabolical enemy out there. 

The point is that by concentrating all our federal headquarters and senior leadership and key resources here we are in fact, giving the enemy an easy shot to decapitate the entire country?

While others (like Paul Kupiec in the WSJ) have questioned whether some of the federal agencies can be moved out to other needy cities and communities across the country for economic reasons (to bring jobs and investment) especially those agencies that are actively looking to build new HQS buildings already (e.g. FBI and Department of Labor), to me the far more potent question is one of national security. 

The main advantage of having the crux of the federal government in the DC area is surely one of coordination--the President wants his Cabinet near him and the Cabinet Secretaries want their senior staff near them, and so on and so on. 

So, you get this mass concentration of a who's who of the federal government in and around Washington, DC. 

But what about the advances of technology? 

Surely, through networks and telecommunications and teleworking, we can support a geographically diverse workforce and do no significant harm to our operating as one.

We're talking a very big cultural change here!

It's one thing to have nuclear missiles roaming the seas on attack submarines waiting for orders from Washington, DC and it's quite another to move the actual government intelligentsia and leadership out from the central hub. 

Let's face it, in a real crisis situation, with the chaos and panic and transportation overflow and perhaps simultaneous cyberattacks, no one is really going to be going anywhere--especially in a surprise attack. 

If Pearl Harbor (of which we just celebrated the 75th anniversary) and 9/11 teach us anything is that when the sh*t hits the fan, it hits hard and sticks solid. 

Working in the Metro DC area, selfishly, I'd like to say keep the investment, jobs, and great opportunities here.

For the good of the nation and our survival against true existential threats, we'd be much smarter to spread the federal wealth as far and wide across this great nation that we can. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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March 21, 2014

Safely Detonate That Malware


I like the potential of the FireEye Malware Protection System (MPS).

Unlike traditional signature-based malware protections like antivirus, firewalls, and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), FireEye is an additional security layer that uses a dynamic Multi-Vector Virtual Execution (MVX) engine to detonate even zero-day attacks from suspicious files, web pages, and email attachments. 

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Target's implementation of FireEye detected the malware attack on Nov 30, 2013 and it alerted security officials, but allegedly "Target stood by as as 40 million credit card numbers--and 70 million addresses, phone numbers, and other pieces of personal information--gushed out of its mainframes"over two weeks!

In fact, FireEye could've been set to "automatically delete [the] malware as it's detected" without human intervention, but "Target's team apparently "turned that function off."

FireEye works by "creating a parallel computer network on virtual machines," and before data reaches its endpoint, they pass through FireEye's technology.  Here they are "fooled into thinking they're in real computers," and the files can be scanned, and attacks spotted in safe "detonation chambers."

Target may have been way off target in the way they bungled their security breach, but using FireEye properly, it is good to know that attacks like this potentially can be thwarted in the future. ;-)

[Note: this is not an endorsement of any product or vendor]
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February 13, 2014

Who Do You Want To Be?

Walking through the halls of one of the local schools, there was this awesome display of cutout hands. 

Each hand, done by a student, was supposed to represent who they wanted to be as people. 

In the center of each was a core saying/belief of the student written on the palm.

And then on each of the five fingers was their personal aspirations:

Emotionally
Physically
Socially
Intellectually
Spiritually

I thought this was a really cool assignment to think and focus on where we're going with our lives and what our personal goals are. 

Like a mini-personal architecture, these hands are the hands of our young people who have their lives ahead of them and the energy and opportunity to shape their futures. 

No, none of us has control over the future, but we can do our part to shape who we are as human beings, as this student says: 

"I am who I want to be."

Of course, we have to choose wisely, work hard, and go for it! 

We never know if there are any true second chances.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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September 1, 2013

Do You Really Want As-Is?

Classic enterprise architecture is figuring out how to move from the current/as-is state to the target/to-be state. 

Generally, anything "as-is" is viewed as legacy, old hat, probably not in the best condition anymore--and it's going without any implied warranties or guarantees as to it's condition.

Hence, at the local IKEA store, when I saw the "as-is" section for 50% off, I was like hey that's right, the "as-is" is good if we want a bargain, but there is usually something wrong with it, and that's why "all sales are final". 

If we want "the good stuff," you don't generally go to the "as-is," but you want to buy stuff for the "to-be," the target state, that you want your place to look like or what you really want to have--and guess what--that is full price!

You can architect your enterprise, yourself, or society for the momentary as-is--but is doesn't last long, because it's outdated, shabby, worn, and maybe even missing some critical parts already. 

That's why you want to architect for the future--for the to-be--with all the working parts, new and shinny, and geared to tackle the market conditions with innovation, functional strength and a design that is ready to turn heads. 

You can save money staying with the as-is, but you'll be getting what you paid for and will be falling behind for another cycle--if you survive. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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October 6, 2009

Measurement is Essential to Results

Mission execution and performance results are the highest goals of enterprise architecture.

In the book Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani, he describes how performance measurement in his administration as mayor of NYC resulted in tremendous improvements, such as drastic decreases in crime. He states: “Every time we’d add a performance indicator, we’d see a similar pattern of improvement.”

How did Giuliani use performance measures? The centerpiece of the effort to reduce crime was a process called Compstat in which crime statistics were collected and analyzed daily, and then at meetings these stats were used to “hold each borough command’s feet to the fire.”

What improvements did Giuliani get from instituting performance measurements? Major felonies fell 12.3%, murder fell 17.9%, and robbery 15.5% from just 1993-1994. “New York’s [crime] rate reduction was three to six times the national average…far surpassed that of any other American city. And we not only brought down the crime rate, we kept it down.”

How important was performance measurement to Giuliani? Giuliani states, “even after eight years, I remain electrified by how effective those Compstat meetings could be. It became the crown jewel of my administration’s push for accountability—yet it had been resisted by many who did not want their performance to be measured.”

From an architecture perspective, performance measurement is critical—you cannot manage what you don’t measure!

Performance measurement is really at the heart of enterprise architecture—identifying where you are today (i.e. your baseline), setting your goals where you want to be in the future (i.e. your targets), and establishing a plan to get your organization from here to there through business process improvement, reengineering, and technology enablement.

In the end, genuine leadership means we direct people, process, and technology towards achieving measureable results. Fear of measurement just won't make the grade!


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September 21, 2009

Testing EA in Virtual Reality

In enterprise architecture, we develop IT targets and plans for the organization, but these are usually not tested in any meaningful or significant way, since they are “future tense”.

Wouldn’t it be incredible to be able to actually test EA hypotheses, targets, and plans in a virtual environment before actually setting off the organization in a specific direction that can have huge implications for its ability to conduct business and achieve results?

MIT Technology Review, in an article entitled “The Fleecing of the Avatars” (Jan/Feb 2008) addresses how virtual reality is being used to a greater extent to mimic and test reality.

One example of the booming virtual world is Second Life, run by Linden Labs. It has 10,000,000 subscribers and “about 50,000 are online at any one time.” In this virtual world, subscribers playing roles as avatars “gather to role-play reenactments of obscure digital Star Trek cartoon episodes, build and buy digital homes and furniture, and hang out on digital beaches.”

However, more and more virtual worlds, like Second Life, are being used by real world mainstream businesses. For example, many companies are developing a presence in the virtual world, such as Dell with a sales office in Second Life, Reebok a store, and IBM maintains business centers in this virtual world. Further, “the World Bank presented a report in Second Life about business development.”

“But big companies like Sun, Reebok, and IBM don’t really do business in virtual worlds; they ‘tunnel’ into them. [In other words,] To close a deal, you need to step out of the ‘sim’ and into the traditional Sun or Reebok or IBM website.”

The development of company’s virtual presence online and their connection back to the real world is potentially a precursor to planning disciplines like EA testing out hypotheses of targets and plans in virtual reality and then actually implementing these back in the real organization.

Others are actually planning to use virtual worlds to test and conduct research. So there is precedent for other disciplines such as EA. For example, Cornell’s Robert Bloomfield, an experimental economist, “conducts lab research—allowing 20 students to make simulated stock trades using real money…and seeing how regulatory changes affect their behavior. He envisions a day when he can do larger studies by setting up parallel virtual worlds. ‘I could create two virtual worlds, one with legal structure, one with another, and compare them…I might lower the capital-gains tax in one and see how business responds. There are things I can’t do with 20 people in a classroom but I can do with 2,000 or 20,000 people in a virtual world.”

Could enterprise architecture do something similar in a virtual world? For example, could we test how business processes need to change when new technology is introduced or how information sharing improves with better architectures for discovering and exchanging data? How about testing people’s reactions and behavior to new systems in a broader virtual world instead of with a more limited number of customers in user acceptance testing? Another possibility is testing the effectiveness of new IT security in a virtual world of gamers and hackers?

Modeling and simulation (M&S) can improve enterprise architecture by testing plans before deploying them. We need to to hire and train people with knowledge, skills, and experience in the M&S discipline and with tools that support this. Then we can test hypothetical return on investment for new IT investments before we open our organizational wallets.


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October 19, 2008

Balancing Strategy and Operations and The Total CIO

How should a CIO allocate their time between strategy and operations?

Some CIOs are all operations; they are concerned solely with the utility computing aspects of IT like keeping the desktops humming and the phones ringing. Availability and reliability are two of their key performance measurement areas. These CIOs are focused on managing the day-to-day IT operations, and given some extra budget dollars, will sooner spend them on new operational capabilities to deploy in the field today.

Other CIOs are all strategy; they are focused on setting the vision for the organization, aligned closely to the business, and communicating the way ahead. Efficiency and effectiveness are two of their key performance measurement areas. These CIOs are often set apart from the rest of the IT division (i.e. the Office of the CIO focuses on the Strategy and the IT division does the ops) and given some extra budget dollars, will likely spend them on modernization and transformation, providing capabilities for the end-user of tomorrow.

Finally, the third category of CIOs, balances both strategy and operations. They view the operations as the fundamentals that need to be provided for the business here and now. But at the same time, they recognize that the IT must evolve over time and enable future capabilities for the end-user. These CIOs, given some extra budget dollars, have to have a split personality and allocate funding between the needs of today and tomorrow.

Government Technology, Public CIO Magazine has an article by Liza Lowery Massey on “Balancing Strategy with Tactics Isn’t Easy for CIOs.”

Ms. Massey advocates for the third category, where the CIO balances strategy and operations. She compares it to “have one foot in today and one in tomorrow…making today’s decisions while considering tomorrow’s impacts.”

How much time a CIO spends on strategy versus operations, Ms. Massey says is based on the maturity of the IT operations. If ops are unreliable or not available, then the CIO goes into survival mode—focused on getting these up and running and stable. However, when IT operations are more mature and stable, then the CIO has more ability to focus on the to-be architecture of the organization.

For the Total CIO, it is indeed a delicate balance between strategy and operations. Focus on strategy to the detriment of IT operations, to the extent that mission is jeopardized, and you are toast. Spend too much time, energy, and resources on IT operations, to the extent that you jeopardize the strategy and solutions needed to address emerging business and end-user requirements, and you will lose credibility and quickly be divorced by the business.

The answer is the Total CIO must walk a fine line. Mission cannot fail today, but survivability and success of the enterprise cannot be jeopardized either. The Total CIO must walk and chew gum at the same time!

Additionally, while this concept is not completely unique to CIOs, and can be applied to all CXOs, CIOs have an added pressure on the strategy side due to the rapid pace of emerging technology and its effects on everything business.


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September 13, 2008

Gap Analysis and Enterprise Architecture

There was a terrific keynote at the 1105 Government Information Group enterprise architecture conference this week in Washington, DC by Mr. Armando Ortiz, who presented “An Executive Architect’s View of IT Asset Investment and EA Governance Strategies.”

The highlight for me was Mr. Ortiz, view of EA gap analysis, which goes something like this (i.e. in my words):

Enterprise architects, supported by business and technical subject matter experts across the organization, develop the current and target architectures. The difference between these is what I would call, the architecture gap, from which is developed the transition plan (so far not much new here).

But here comes the rest…

The gap between the current IT assets and the target IT assets results in one of two things, either:

  • New IT assets (i.e. an investment strategy) or
  • Retooling of existing IT assets (i.e. a basic containment strategy);

New IT investments are a strategic, long-term strategy and retooling the existing IT assets is an operational, short-term strategy.

In terms of the corporate actors, you can have either:

  • Business IT (decentralized IT) or
  • Enterprise IT (centralized IT; the CIO) manage the IT asset strategy.

For new IT investments:

  • If they are managed by business IT, then the focus is business innovation (i.e. it is non-standard IT and driven by the need for competitive advantage), and
  • If it is managed by enterprise IT, then it is a growth strategy (i.e. it is rolling out standardized IT—utility computing--for implementing enterprise solutions for systems or infrastructure).

For existing IT assets:

  • If they are managed by business IT, then the focus is improvement (i.e. improving IT for short-term profitability), and
  • If it is managed by enterprise IT, then it is a renewal strategy (i.e. for recapitalizing enterprise IT assets).

What the difference who is managing the IT assets?

  • When IT Assets are managed by business IT units, then the organization is motivated by the core mission or niche IT solutions and the need to remain nimble in the marketplace, and
  • When IT assets are managed by the enterprise IT, then the organizations is motivated by establishing centralized controls, standards, and cost-effectiveness.
Both approaches are important in establishing a solid, holistic, federated IT governance.

Mr. Ortiz went on to describe the EA plans developing three CIO WIFMS (what’s in it for me):

  • Operational excellence (“run IT efficiently)
  • Optimization (“make IT better”)
  • Transformation (“new IT value proposition”)

The link between IT assets, investment/containment strategies, business and enterprise IT actors, and the benefits to the CIO and the enterprise was a well articulated and perceptive examination of enterprise architecture and gap analysis.


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August 23, 2008

Building Enterprise Architecture Momentum

Burton Group released a report entitled “Establishing and Maintaining Enterprise Architecture Momentum” on 8 August 2008.

Some key points and my thoughts on these:

  • How can we drive EA?

Value proposition—“Strong executive leadership helps establish the enterprise architecture, but…momentum is maintained as EA contributes value to ongoing activities.”

Completely agree: EA should not be a paper or documentation exercise, but must have a true value proposition where EA information products and governance services enable better decision making in the organization.

  • Where did the need for EA come from?

Standardization—“Back in the early days of centralized IT, when the mainframe was the primary platform, architecture planning was minimized and engineering ruled. All the IT resources were consolidated in a single mainframe computer…the architecture was largely standardized by the vendor…However distributed and decentralized implementation became the norm with the advent of personal computers and local area networks…[this] created architectural problems…integration issues…[and drove] the need to do architecture—to consider other perspectives, to collaboratively plan, and to optimize across process, information sources, and organizations.”

Agree. The distributed nature of modern computing has resulted in issues ranging from unnecessary redundancy, to a lack of interoperability, component re-use, standards, information sharing, and data quality. Our computing environments have become overly complex and require a wide range of skill sets to build and maintain, and this has an inherently high and spiraling cost associated with it. Hence, the enterprise architecture imperative to break down the silos, more effectively plan and govern IT with an enterprise perspective, and link resources to results!

  • What are some obstacles to EA implementation?

Money rules—“Bag-O-Money Syndrome Still Prevails…a major factor inhibiting the adoption of collaborative decision-making is the funding model in which part of the organization that bring the budget makes the rules.”

Agree. As long as IT funding is not centralized with the CIO, project managers with pockets of money will be able to go out and buy what they want, when they want, without following the enterprise architecture plans and governance processes. To enforce the EA and governance, we must centralize IT funding under the CIO and work with our procurement officials to ensure that IT procurements that do not have approval of the EA Board, IT Investment Review Board, and CIO are turned back and not allowed to proceed.

  • What should we focus on?

Focus on the target architecture—“Avoid ‘The Perfect Path’…[which] suggest capturing a current state, which is perceived as ‘analyze the world then figure out what to do with it.’ By the time the current state is collected, the ‘as-is’ has become the ‘as-was’ and a critical blow has been dealt to momentum…no matter what your starting point…when the program seems to be focused on studies and analysis…people outside of EA will not readily perceive its value.”

Disgree with this one. Collecting a solid baseline architecture is absolutely critical to forming a target architecture and transition plan. Remember the saying, “if you don’t know where you are going, then any road will get you there.” Similarly, if you don’t know where you are coming from you can’t lay in a course to get there. For example, try getting directions on Google Maps with only a to and no from location. You can’t do it. Similarly you can’t develop a real target and transition plan without identifying and understanding you current state and capabilities to determine gaps, redundancies, inefficiencies, and opportunities. Yes, the ‘as-is’ state is always changing. The organization is not static. But that does not mean we cannot capture a snapshot in time and build off of this. Just like configuration management, you need to know what you have in order to manage change to it. And the time spent on analysis (unless we’re talking analysis paralysis), is not wasted. It is precisely the analysis and recommendations to improve the business processes and enabling technologies that yield the true benefits of the enterprise architecture.

  • How can we show value?

Business-driven —“An enterprise architect’s ability to improve the organization’s use of technology comes through a deep understanding of the business side of the enterprise and from looking for those opportunities that provide the most business value. However, it is also about recognizing where change is possible and focusing on the areas where you have the best opportunity to influence the outcome.”

Agree. Business drives technology, rather than doing technology for technology’s sake. In the enterprise architecture, we must understand the performance results we are striving to achieve, the business functions, processes, activities, and tasks to produce to results, and the information required to perform those functions before we can develop technology solutions. Further, the readiness state for change and maturity level of the organization often necessitates that we identify opportunities where change is possible, through genuine business interest, need, and desire to partner to solve business problems.


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July 10, 2008

IT Planning and Enterprise Architecture

Perhaps many of you have wondered what the relationship is between the IT Strategic Plan and the Enterprise Architecture Transition Plan? Why do you need both? Isn’t one IT plan just like another?

There are many different plans starting with the organization’s strategic plan that drives the IT plan and so forth. Each sequential layer of the plan adds another crucial dimension for the plan to enable it to achieve it ultimate implementation.

The various plans establish line of sight from the highest level plan for the organization to individual performance plans and the implementation of new or changes to systems, IT products and standards, and ultimately to the capabilities provided the end-user.

Here is my approach to User-centric IT Planning:

1. Organizational Strategic Plan—the highest level overall plan enterprise; it identifies the goals and objectives of the organization, and drives the IT Strategic Plan.

2. IT Strategic Pan—the IT Plan for the enterprise; it identifies the IT goals and objectives, and drives the IT Performance Plan.

3. IT Performance Plan—a decomposition of the IT Plan; it identifies IT initiatives and milestones, and drives the IT Roadmap and Individual Performance Plans.

4. IT Roadmap and Individual Performance Plans

a) IT Roadmap—a visual timeline of the IT Performance Plan; it identifies programs and projects milestones, and drives the Target Architecture and Transition Plan.

b) Individual Performance Plans—the performance plans for your IT staff; it is derived from the IT Performance Plan, and provides line of sight from the Organizational and IT Strategic Plans all the way to the individual’s performance plan, so everyone knows what they are supposed to do and why (i.e. how it fits into the overall goals and objectives.

5. Target Architecture and Transition Plan

a) Target Architecture—a decomposition of the IT Roadmap into systems and IT products and standards; it identifies the baseline (As-Is) and the target (To-Be) for new and major changes to systems and IT products and standards.

[Note: Target Architecture can also be used in more general terms to refer to the future state of the organization and IT, and this is how I often use it.]

b) Transition Plan—a visual timeline of the changes for implementing the changes to go from the baseline (As-Is) to the target (To-Be) state for systems and IT products and standards.

6. Capabilities—the target state in terms of business capabilities provided to the end-user derived from the changes to systems, IT products and standards, and business processes; it is derived from the Target Architecture and Transition Plan.

This planning approach is called User-centric IT Planning because it is focused on the end-user. User-centric IT Planning develops a plan that is NOT esoteric or shelfware, but rather one that is focused on being actionable and valuable to the organization and its end-users. User-centric IT plans have line of sight from the organization’s strategic plan all the way to the individual performance plans and end-user capabilities.

Now that’s the way to plan IT!


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July 9, 2008

DARPA and Enterprise Architecture

As a discipline enterprise architecture strives to move the organization into the future—that is what EA planning and IT governance is all about—and that is also what an organization like DARPA is about.

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major impact on the world, including computer networking [the Internet]DARPA’s original mission, established in 1958, was to prevent technological surprise like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space. The mission statement has evolved over time. Today, DARPA’s mission is still to prevent technological surprise to the US, but also to create technological surprise for our enemies. DARPA is independent from other more conventional military R&D and reports directly to senior Department of Defense management. DARPA has around 240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $3.2 billion budget.” (Wikipedia)

National Defense Magazine, November 2007, states that DARPA “has a reputation for taking on challenges that sometimes seem to defy the laws of physics—or at least common sense.”

“’DARPA Hard’ refer to problems its researchers attempt to solve...’Please tell us that it’s something that can’t be done. It’s science fiction. That is a challenge we can’t resist,’” says Brett Giroir, director of the defense sciences office.

Here are some interesting target architectures that DARPA has set out to tackle:

  • Transparent walls—“DARPA wants to defeat rock, concrete and plaster walls—not by blowing them up—but rather by making them transparent. The agency is creating a suite of sensors to map the inside of buildings, tunnels, caves, and underground facilities.” The Visi-building project ,for example, uses radar to detect the inside of buildings, and then DARPA is exploring how to penetrate and destroy without resorting to nukes.
  • Inner Armor—“the objective is to fortify the entire soldier against attack from the enemy of the environment.” This includes environmental hardening to “protect soldiers from extreme heat, cold, and high altitudes,” and kill proofing “to protect soldiers from chemical and radiological threats,” as well as safeguarding them from deadly diseases. It’s a comprehensive protection package. DARPA for example envision “universal immune cells that are capable of making anti-bodies that neutralize…hundreds of threat agents.”
  • Chemical mapping—“there are about 80,000 commercially available chemicals, and many of them are toxic, DARPA wants to create a map showing where and if they appear in a given area.” This would show forces where chemical labs or weapons caches are. One idea is to use “replace sensors with nano-technology-based samplers that extract chemicals…[and that have ] a GPS device attached [that] could be placed on helicopters, military vehicles, or secretly placed on delivery trucks making rounds through a city”

These are great! You have got to love the “know no bounds” attitude of DARPA. They are truly innovators, and are a model for the rest of government and industry in defining problems and actually solving them.

In enterprise architecture, it is one thing to set targets that are incremental, non-monumental, and the same as everyone else is doing (like moving to Microsoft Vista). But it is an altogether different thing to set targets that are groundbreaking in terms of business process engineering and technology innovation.

While not all our targets can be revolutionary, perhaps a subset of them should be to keep us really innovating and not just copycatting the competition. We need to bring innovation back to the forefront of what we believe, how we think, what we do, and how we compete.


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June 22, 2008

What Not to Tell Your Boss and Enterprise Architecture

ComputerWorld Magazine, 20 June 2008, tells us five things you don’t want to tell the CIO and which I believe tracks closely with the enterprise architecture function and goals, as follows:

  1. “All about the technology -- and nothing about the business”—just like enterprise architecture is about business driving technology, rather than doing technology for technology’s sake, so too the CIO is interested in aligning business and technology. So don’t just go to the CIO talking technology solutions unless you have a clear understanding and can articulate the business requirements.
  2. “There's only one solution”—in enterprise architecture and IT governance, we validate requirements against the architecture—the baseline, the target, and the transition plan. It is especially important to check if there are existing systems, products, and standard that can be used to meet user requirements, rather than building or acquiring something from scratch. There is rarely only a single technology solution for a business problem. Therefore, we need to evaluate the proposed new IT investment in terms of the return on investment, risk management, strategic business alignment, and technical compliance. Additionally, we need to review the analysis of alternatives to make sure we are effectively managing our scarce IT resources.
  3. “Bad opinions about your colleagues”—EA planning and governance makes information transparent and enables better decision making. With EA information, vetting of IT investment and collaborative decision making, there is no need to point fingers at each other over failed IT projects. Instead, through sharing information and bringing IT project stakeholders together, we all have input into the decision process and share the project risk.
  4. “There's no way”—With enterprise architecture, rather than say there’s no way to achieve enterprise goals or overcome technical challenges, we develop a target and plan for how we will do it. No, the goals are not achieved overnight, but rather by following a meticulous and vetted plan, usually over a period of three to five years, we can transform the enterprise.
  5. A surprise”—Bosses don’t like surprises. In a professional setting, we usually like rational thinking, process, structure, and planning, so that we can effectively deal with the chaotic world out there. EA planning and structured governance helps the organization stay on course and not get surprised or thrown. The planning process itself involves looking at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and makes us more self-aware and proactive as an organization, so there are less surprises waiting to ambush us.

EA helps us to NOT have to tell our boss, the CIO, things he doesn’t want to hear, because we are proactive in our approach to planning and governance.


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June 8, 2008

TEOTWAWKI and Enterprise Architecture

TEOTWAWKI stands for the end of the world as we know it. It is a term used in the survivalist movement and is sometimes used as a reference to the apocalypse. (The apocalypse though has religious connotations in that the end of the world has greater meaning in terms of revealing G-d’s ultimate purpose for mankind.)

The end of the world—is there such a thing?

As mortal human beings, we know that all living things have a beginning and an end of life. Even inanimate objects are recognized as having a lifecycle, and this is often talked about from a management perspective in terms of administering “things” from their initiation through their ultimate disposition. Some common lifecycles frequently referred to are: organizations, products, projects, assets, investments, and so on.

So how about the world itself?

Well, the answer is of course, yes—even the world will one day come to end. Astronomers have long witnessed even the implosion of stars at their end of life—these are called supernovas. And our world is a lot smaller than a star; in fact, you could fit about a million Earths inside our sun (which is a star).

When times get tough, TEOTWAWKI is something that perhaps we ponder about more and wonder whether this is it!

For example, during the Cold War and the buildup of the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and the United States, there were enough nukes to destroy the world ten times over. And people wondered when the button would actually be pushed.

Nowadays, we wonder less about nuclear holocaust and more about overpopulation (currently at 6.3 billion and expected to reach 9 billion by 2042) and depletion of world energy resources like oil (currently at $140 a barrel and up 44% in cost YTD), demand outstripping supply for silver, copper, aluminum, and many other commodities, and shortages of food (as the UK Times reported in February that “the world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.”)

Further, while the population continues to explode and resources continue to be depleted, we continue to overflow the world’s dumps with garbage so much so that there has even been talk of sending garbage into space, just to get it the heck out of here!

And let’s not forget global warming and pollutants that stink up our cities, cause acid rain, asthma, and so many other unfortunate effects on the ecosystem and human health.

The good news is TEOWAWKI talk is often just fear and occasional panic and it is not imminent. The bad news is there are some very real problems in the world today.

The problems are so big that leaders and governments are having a difficult time trying to tackle them. All too often, the problems get passed to the next generation, with the mantra, “Let it be someone else’s problem.”

As an enterprise architect, my frame of reference is to look at the way things are (the baseline) and try to come up with a better state for future (the target) and work up a transition plan, and basically get moving.

We all know that it is extremely difficult to see our way through these extremely complex problems of global magnitude. But if enterprise architecture has taught me anything, it is that we must create a roadmap for transformation; we must forever work to change things for the better. We must do whatever we can to prevent TEOTWAWKI.

Perhaps the field of enterprise architecture can be expanded from one that is IT-focused and now becoming business and IT-focused to ultimately becoming a discipline that can drive holistic change for major world problems and not just enterprise problems. Does this mean that enterprise architecture at some point becomes world architecture?


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June 5, 2008

The Visionary and Enterprise Architecture

In User-centric EA, we develop a vision or target state for the organization. However, there are a number of paradoxes in developing an EA vision/target, which makes this goals quite challenging indeed.

In the book, The Visionary’s Handbook by Wacker and Taylor, the authors identify the paradoxes of developing a vision for the enterprise; here are some interesting ones to ponder:

  1. Proving the vision—“The closer your vision gets to provable ‘truth,’ the more you are simply describing the present in the future tense.”
  2. Competing today, yet planning for tomorrow—“By its very nature, the future destablizes the present. By its very natures, the present resists the future. To survive you need duality [i.e. living in two tenses, the present and the future], but people and companies by their very nature tend to resisting living in two tenses.” “You have to compete in the future dimension without destabilizing the competition [i.e. your ability to compete] in the present and without subverting the core values that have sustained your business in the past.”
  3. Bigger needs to be smaller—“The bigger you are, the smaller you need to be….great size is great power, but great size is also stasis.”
  4. The future is unpredictable—“Nothing will turn out exactly as it is supposed to…yet if you fail to act, you will cease to exist in any meaningful professional or business sense.”

So how does one develop a viable target architecture?

The key would seem to be in deconflicting past, present, and future. The past cannot be a hindrance to future change and transformation—the past must remain the past; lessons learned are welcome and desirable, but the options for the future should be open to innovation and hard work. The resistance of the present (to the future) must be mitigated by continuous communications and marketing; we must bring people along and provide leadership. The future is unknown, but trends and probabilities are possible for setting a way ahead; of course, the target needs to remain adaptable to changing conditions.

Certainly, any target architecture we develop is open to becoming a "target" for those who wish to take pot shots. But in an ever changing world and fierce global competition, we cannot sit idle. The architecture must lead the way for incremental and transformative change for the organization, all the while course correcting based on the evolving baseline and market conditions. EA is as much an art as it is a science, and the paradoxes of vision and planning need to be managed carefully.


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May 25, 2008

Compassionate Change and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture, as John Zachman said, is about managing change and complexity.

Naomi Karten has an interesting op-ed in ComputerWorld, 19 May 2008, on change management.

Naomi writes: “managers don’t want to have to deal with the resistance and objections and pushback and grousing and grumbling that so often accompany change efforts.”

Change causes angst (hey, we’re all human!):

“The reality, however, is that turbulence is a fundamental part of the change experience. Replace what’s familiar and predictable with that which is unfamiliar, confusing, ambiguous or potentially risky, and people react…Almost any change (and sometimes even just the rumor of a change) upsets the relative equilibrium.”

Reaction to change is deep and occurs on many levels:

“People’s reactions are often more emotional and visceral than logical and rational. Some people display shock, anxiety, fear or anger. Some become preoccupied, absent-minded, forgetful, distracted or fatigued—even if they view the change as positive.”

Change management is important to successfully implementing change, modernization, and transformation:

“You can’t eliminate the turbulence. But you can minimize the duration and intensity of the turbulence, and therefore implement the change more smoothly and with less gnashing of teeth.”

So how do we help people see their way through change?

“What people need most in order to cope is communication in the form of information, empathy, reassurance and feedback.”

Aren’t adults really just big children, with fear and anxiety over the unknown? (Remember the “bogeyman” under the bed?) How many of you with children hear them express some nervousness right before the first day of a new school year or going to a new school or summer camp. It’s human nature. We are creatures of habit; change the structure we are used to and we’re like fish out of water, working just to catch our breath.

The truth is, all human beings are mortal and can be hurt by change. Cut them and they bleed. Pull the rug out from under them and they can fall on their face, especially if they don’t know first that the rug will be moving! That’s what change is—it’s moving the pieces around and expecting a person to know where things are.

As enterprise architects, leaders, change agents, it is crucial that we treat people with respect, dignity, equality and compassion. Yes, “business is business,” but we can elevate ourselves above the everyday tough business decisions, and recognize that our authority, initiatives, and change efforts have a human impact that we need be sensitive to. Part of enterprise architecture therefore needs to be building communication and sound human capital management into our IT planning and governance processes. For example, our transition plan to move from the baseline to the target state needs to not only address business process improvement and technology modernization, but also human capital management.

People need to worked with. They need to understand the changes taking place and how they fit in. They need to have time to adjust. They need support and encouragement. They need to be treated with humanity. Let’s not lose this in our effort to reach for the future state of the organization.


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May 14, 2008

A Natural Education and Enterprise Architecture

Anyone who has seen the amount of homework and stress our children are under these days would have to admit that our children are losing their childhood earlier and earlier.

The pressure is on for children to get the best early education so they can get the best SAT grades so they can get into the best colleges and universities so they can get the best and highest paying job so they can live a wonderful carefree life. WHAT THE HECK!

Someone please architect a better way to educate our children so that they flourish educationally, but still enjoy those treasured years.

The Wall Street Journal, 14 April 2008, reports that “While schools and parents push young children to read, write, and surf the internet earlier in order to prepare for an increasingly cutthroat global economy, some little Germans are taking a less traveled path—deep into the woods.”

Germany has about 700 Waldkindergarten or “forest kindergartens,” in which children spend their days outdoor year-round. Blackboards surrender to the Black Forest.” The children, ages 3 to 6, spend the day in the forest singing songs, playing in the mud, climbing trees, examining worms, lizards and frogs, and building campfires. This is a natural way for children to spend their time and it aligns well with “environmentally-conscious and consumption-wary” attitudes.

Similar programs have opened in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, and in the U.S. (in Portland, Oregon last fall).

A mixed bag of results:

“Waldkindergarten kids exercise their imaginations more than their brick-and-mortar peers do and are better at concentrating and communication…the children appear to get sick less often in these fresh-air settings. Studies also suggest their writing skills are less developed, though, and that they are less adept than other children at distinguishing colors, forms, and sizes.”

Is the tradeoff worth it?

In the U.S., the notion is generally, we have “to push academics earlier and earlier.” However, the back-to-basics approach of Waldkindergarten is challenging this thinking. One teacher summarized the benefits by simply stating, “It’s peaceful here, not like inside a room.” Another said that this natural education is a way to combat “early academic fatigue syndrome…we have 5 year-olds that are tired of going to school.”

I believe that if we teach children a love of learning and life, then they will thrive more than force-feeding them reading, writing, and arithmetic at age 3, 4, or 5.

We can architect a better education for our children. It starts with letting them be children.

From an EA perspective, we need to acknowledge that there is a baseline, target and transition plan for our children's education, and we do NOT need to get to the target state of advanced learning by putting undue pressure on children so early in their lives. In fact, if we understand that transition plans are just that—a transition from one state to another, in a phased approach of evolution—then we can indeed let children explore the world more freely and creatively at a young age, and evolve that incrementally with the skills they need as time goes on.


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