A Method for Enterprise Architecture Alignment
Our latest paper on enterprise architecture is addressing the business and IT alignment problem. The paper will be available as part of a Springer LNBIP volume - but a pre-pub version is available from me if there is interest.
Summary.
Business and ICT strategic alignment remains an ongoing challenge facing organizations as they react to changing requirements by adapting or introducing new technologies to existing infrastructure. Enterprise Architecture (EA) has increasingly become relevant to these demands and as a consequence numerous methods and frameworks have emerged. However these approaches remain bloated, time-consuming and lacking in precision. This paper proposes a light-weight method for EA called LEAP and introduces a language for EA simulation that is illustrated with a detailed case study of business change currently being addressed by UK higher education institutions.
The method overview is shown below:
Key words: Enterprise Architecture, Simulation, Alignment
Satinder Sartaj: Sufi Music at the Barbican, April 2012
Satinder Sartaj is the latest Punjabi folk music phenomena sweeping through the Punjabi diaspora across the world.
Heir-apparent to Gurdas Mann, @SufiSartaj locates his music and lyrics in a refreshingly different and literary sphere. Playing to a capacity audience at the Barbican in London, Sartaj skillfully introduced the evening mehfil, acknowledging first his musicians and then his UK audience with a carefully crafted couplet aimed at building an instant rapport with his listeners.
The first half of the concert was mostly a live version of his most recent album “Sartaj”, which of course includes the hugely popular songs “Sai” and “Ammi” amongst others. Disappointingly, the track “Sai” was sung at a much faster tempo than the album version losing much of its rhythmic, hypnotic effect in the process. Generally, though, the songs did not let the listener down. While it is of course difficult to compare live performances, aficionados of the late and great Jagjit Singh might note that live performances are intended to offer embellishment and signal to the audience the intimate musical relationship between the singer and the accompanying musicians, Sartaj did not create this effect for those at the Barbican.
As the performance continued, the audience at the Barbican was given an introductory class to quintessential Punjabi sufi poetry – Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah and of course the 20th century poetry of Shiv Kumar Batalvi – the most recent of the great love-lorn poets from Punjab. The literary class also gave Sartaj an ideal opportunity to pay homage to his musical heritage and acknowledge to the UK audience his respect for Gurdas Mann.
Again, indicating his academic roots, (he has an earned doctorate from Chandigarh University in Sufi Music, as well as qualifications in Farsi – the ancient language used in sufi poetry), Sartaj controlled his audience as a lecturer would: introducing the subject, delivering the content and neatly summarising at the end. With some humour, he encouraged the audience to complete the rhyming couplets and occasionally berating them for getting it wrong. His lyrics although clearly located in sufi poetry raised interesting political questions around the two partitions of Punjab and raised the spectre of the future of farming in Punjab with the rising cost of seeds and issues of land grab. Perhaps this is where he is most different from Gurdas Mann. Mann has generally provided a commentary on the social fabric of Punjab, Sartaj is exploring politics through the sufi lens.
The Barbican management might be a little aggrieved that Sartaj did not break for an interval, but the audience relished the extra few songs squeezed in by omitting the break. Responding to the nature of the audience – boisterous, vocal and well lubricated with Barbican ale, the latter half of the performance was dominated by the Dhol beat and the two other percussionists on synthesiser drums and tabla. Panjabi tappe (cutting, humorous couplets) seamlessly flowed from one to another to the predictable rhythm of the Dhol with flashes of embellishment provided by Sartaj’s signature instrument, the Chimta (flat metal tongs to which are attached multiple jingles). Those hoping to a return to the more classically oriented sufi form would probably be disappointed by the last few items in the performance.
A plea to Sartaj, your place in the pantheon of great Punjabi singers and writers is likely, but retain your sufi links in your live performances.
SoSym Theme Issue: Enterprise Modelling
- Business Alignment: elements of a business are shown to meet its goals.
- Business Change Management: as-is and to-be models are used to plan how a business is to be changed.
- Governance and Compliance: models are used to show that processes are in place to comply with regulations.
- Acquisitions and Mergers: models are used to analyze the effect of combining two or more businesses.
- Enterprise Resource Planning: models are used to analyze the use of resources within a business and to show that given quality criteria are achieved.
- Modelling Languages: including UML; SysML; ArchiMate; MODAF; TOGAF.
- Enterprise Views: stakeholder identification; multiple linguistic communities.
- Enterprise Patterns: an organization is shown to conform to general (possibly executable) organizational principles.
- Event Driven Architectures: constructing enterprise architectures based on complex events.
- Enterprise Simulation: executing configurations of organizational units in order to analyse and verify performance.
- Intent to submit : 01 Sep 11
- Paper submission: 01 Nov 11
- Notification: 01 Feb 12
- Publication: 2012
A Domain Specific Language for Contextual Design
This paper was presented at the recent IFIP Human Centred Software Engineering Conference.
Abstract.
This paper examines the role of user-centered design (UCD) approaches to design and implementation of a mobile social software application to support student social workers in their work place. The experience of using a variant of UCD is outlined. The principles and expected norms of UCD raised a number of key lessons. It is proposed that these problems and lessons are a result of the inadequacy of precision of modeling the outcomes of UCD, which prevents model driven approaches to method integration between UCD approaches. Given this, it is proposed that the Contextual Design method is a good candidate for enhancing with model driven principles. A subset of the Work model focussing on Cultural and Flow models are described using a domain specific language and supporting tool built using the MetaEdit+ platform.
The full paper is available in the Springer LNCS 6409 series. ISBN 0302-9743
A preprint is available here
Dynamic and seamless capture of actions and not the outputs in learning
In a recent conversation with a research professor at my institution we were discussing some ideas that were initially seeded by some existing work we were doing on visual analytics. As our ideas began to develop, first in discussion, then on a shared piece of paper and then onto the whiteboard, the ideas became more solid but at the same time less rich. In our desire to capture the outputs, we lost so much rich interaction. Clearly this has echoes of the SECI Knowledge Creation cycle reported by Nonaka in his book the Knowledge Creating Company.
We then surmised that this issue has resonance with students and group work. Academics set group assignments expecting the students to collaborate. Institutions then invest in – group work rooms that have a single projector for example, digital resources that are accessed by a single id and expect students to go through the knowledge creation cycle in a collaborative manner. Some efforts to provide an technical infrastructure for supporting the knowledge cycle exists via the use of discussion boards – but is that enough?
We posited that we need new learning spaces that support the dynamic, seamless capture of the knowledge creation process. Such spaces must capture pen strokes, video, audio, and the move to the whiteboard and to do so against a timeline. Then this wealth of data must be minable and concept driven to enable later visualisation and also be aligned with the original intentions of the collaborating group. The question arises – is the current range of technologies, iphones, ipads, usb capture pens, interactive whiteboards, touch sensitive large screens now robust enough and can they be integrated to provide such a learning space?
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-28
- Football Philosophy: Mourinho: I came to Italy a honest person and I will leave Italy as an honest professional #
- Student Daughter back home for weekend - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9DEUaN #
- Sachin Tendulkar the first to 200 in an ODI!!! - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9eSKFh #
- The Ford /Amis spat gets better - following Amis’s response yesterday, Hitchin also writes in todays Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/yzsye6h #
- Now thats growing on me: TWERTCH: the art of watching tv and working in 140 sec bursts! #
- Working from home is always that much more fun when India are playing cricket!. I’m learning to Watch and Work 140 sec bursts - twertch? #
- Spice Palette - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/dAHzQh #
- Abstract art - by Oliver Marsden vandalised! - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9mNIar #
- using ArgoUML for the Mac - just about ok - wish there was really good UML 2.0 tool for the Mac that is free! #
- Yet another last resort for the daily photo - egg - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bkGcRg #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-21
- Bought the toryGraph (and binned) cos of the free dvd of the Spy who Came in from the Cold - surely the best spy story ever written? #
- Speed #1 - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bKfKfT #
- Today’s must read - In today’s Guardian - Anna Ford’s letter to Martin Amis - telling him grow up and look at his own behaviour - ouch! #
- Brick Span - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9i27Pd #
- Jackpot - no more unread emails! Its taken a week! #
- Kitchen Artwork - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bWsBYp #
- Hotels along the Thames - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9vXAH3 #
- ok - this seems like the one - reviews are good: http://tinyurl.com/yc8v26u #
- researching Canon Zoom Lens to replace the standard kit lens any advice from tweeters? #
- Shapes and stained glass - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9nuXFc #
- Distortion - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/ahCHkB #
- Lamp - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/aygi6b #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-14
- A walk in the town - Library - useful building#1 - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/ds5m4S #
- The great decant continues - Furniture done, now the TV and its appendages - here is the component wiring diagram: http://twitpic.com/12zzhr #
- Is it just this the South? But where have all the birds gone? Absolutely zilch in garden for the last week. #
- Contemplating the end of the week and how to siphon a room of furniture to the rest of the house in preparation for ceiling repair work. #
- Catkins… - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bgFu7X #
- enjoying working at home - have already saved 3 hours of life and getting lots of things done. #
- Diagonals - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bika97 #
- enjoying the warm glow from Wolves beating Spurs and mac lap heating properties- surely that should be listed as a design feature? #
- Fire Station - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bGKnPZ #
- An old but useful sign? - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/b0olnh #
- Enjoying marking UG dissertations (really) - Not too many to go - but will the feeling last? #
- Google Goes Social with Google Buzz http://is.gd/81K5M. I saw this and thought - is Google shooting itself? What’s happened to Google Wave? #
- The fight against bottled water - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/cGjUUY #
- blip hunting in the marshes - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/ckISK9 #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-07
- modern-eclectic - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/cpBYqe #
- Art work? - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/aB1Eu1 #
- Hendon Central Stn - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/cY9Av3 #
- Abstracted rain - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9s6wU7 #
- Distinct lack of 3g services in the Marlow area - how is one expected to participate in mobile web? #
- robo-dog - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9Dkbu5 #
- Traffic light blip - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/ceb06W #
- Visiting the strange place that holds lots of books to borrow. Wondering if there be ghosts there. #
- Ladies Fingers - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bDyxRr #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-31
- Russian Orthodox Church - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/9oJPHh #
- The Thames#1 - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/cM0t0x #
- Still listening to Blair at #Chilcot - he does like the use of “calculus of judgement”. #
- Enjoying Tony Blair at the #Chilcot inquiry - superlative performance - great background noise whilst reviewing journal papers! #
- My early version of the #iPad and experiences - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/bBjcQs #
- flag - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/cNFah9 #
- Sunset over Northwest London - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/aSs1F3 #
- Burns Night! - Ardbeg - Single Islay Malt - new @blipfoto journal entry - http://bit.ly/52OQJR #
- it takes 64s to recover your train of thoughts after interruption by an email - 8.5 hours per wk if you check your email every 5min -ouch! #
