Serge Thorn

Governance is currently a key topic for many IT functions. Its definition varies, but its key themes are true for all companies: effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability. Business value and risk mitigation are also at its center and represent a significant part of enterprise governance overall. Due to the horizontal nature of IT, where almost everyone in the enterprise uses IT assets to complete their responsibilities, the impact of effective IT governance is quite visible throughout an organization. IT governance defines a structure of relationships, processes, and measurements to direct and control IT assets (e.g., people, finance, infrastructure) to achieve the enterprise’s goals by adding value while balancing risk with return. It helps to define roles and responsibilities and specify an accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in IT and ... (more)

IT Architecture Is Not Enterprise Architecture

For many years I have observed lots of confusion with some basic definitions such as IT and Enterprise Architecture among other terms. I will not try to define the meaning of Enterprise Architecture by myself (despite I have my own view on this) as this is something being right now redefined by the Open Group (which by the way used to call their events “IT Architecture Practitioner Conference” and changed only recently to “Enterprise Architecture Practitioner Conference”). Looking at job definitions related to Architecture positions, I have also identified a clear misunderstandin... (more)

Which Enterprise Architecture Framework are you using?

Linkedin introduced recently a new feature: Polls. I wanted to test that feature and created a poll with the main EA frameworks. Unfortunately, this is limited to 5 and I have not been able to include something like "others" or "proprietary". Furthermore it is not possible to select several. If interested, you can access this with http://polls.linkedin.com/p/13540/ikhnz Interesting results! ... (more)

Enterprise Architecture, TOGAF and Solution Architects

Quite often people wonder where a Solution Architect fits within the TOGAF Framework and it is not obvious that there is a single answer. I suggest we look first at a generic profile for a Solution Architect. Companies such as Oracle, Cisco, SAP and others have roles called Solution Architect but with little apparent agreement to what that role is. Some commonalities between various skills are: · Strategic business acumen (understand business requirements and strategy) · Technical analysis · Broad and deep technical knowledge · Technical leadership (the trusted, technical advisor for as... (more)

ITIL V3, Enterprise Architecture and Project Portfolio Management, where do I start?

Recently I have attended the ITIL V2 to V3 bridge course and took the examination. It is clear that one day is not enough and a day and a half would have been convenient. IIL V3 is supposed to be an evolution and not a revolution… Pretty sure that a day and a half would have frightened some IT decision makers… and the decision was from trainers to only offer that single day. As I was prepared for the course (I did some reading before), this was not a real issue... This being said, after a few days I was wondering how companies would present ITIL V3 to the IT Management team, to a... (more)