Friday, June 15, 2007
Links for 2007-05-15
Good to see that others recognize a shortage in quality Documentum technical resources but the problem is pervasive throughout the entire ECM universe. Even the most talented in this space usually have zero clue as to how to integrate products in their domain with products in other domains such as BPM and SOA. An enterprise is really out of luck if they expect an ECM person to be thoughtful about security considerations
Normally, I would go on the attack when I see panel discussions on SOA that don't include a single employee of a Fortune enterprise but since Todd Biske is on the panel, I know they are well represented.
Finally started working on my blog about George Bush
While enterprise architects are busy aligning IT with the business, the quality of source code within their enterprise is going down the toilet. Maybe they should focus on maturing their developers by helping them find better ways of developing valuable working software to the business instead of focusing on issues that don't matter.
How much software within the walls of corporate America is simply unusable? Ever seen the applications that most folks in call center settings use?
Steve Duplessie comments on the need for process improvement. I would be curious to know his opinion as to the more important need for people improvement. Maybe we could agree that some folks who are process weenies love to have heavily orchestrated but otherwise highly inefficient processes while others prefer lighterweight processes to enable agility and that instead of eliminating processes, maybe an enterprise could change their hiring process
The quote of: Generally, in large corporations, EA has much more to do with how you do things rather on what you do is spot on. Many enterprise architects rely on distilled information produced by large analyst firms yet havent figured out that this approach will guide them to a place they don't want to be.
John Domenichini is calling for an interoperability event which I think is the wrong approach. Can he name a single CRM, BPM or ECM system that currently implements support for XACML? The vendors in these spaces haven't been paying attention to standards based security and the focus needs to be on educating those outside of the security product domain. Gerry Gebel would probably make customers happy if he could get Anne Thomas Manes to start asking products she covers whether they have all the right security standards built in. Security is not just about identity, privacy and risk management, it needs to be built into products we already use
I think this text is good introductory material and helps one understand what enterprise architecture is but does nothing to help folks practice it. One of the problems with all of the literature on enterprise architecture is that they all focus on the creation of comprehensive documentation and don't provide any guidance on enabling the strategic intent of the business, hence the reason why enterprise architecture is only marginally successful. Maybe we would be best served by encouraging others to shy away from TOGAF, Zachman and other documentation oriented frameworks
