What Every BA Should Know About ITIL

There is no shortage of frameworks out there. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) comes from good old UK, in response to the growing dependence on IT starting in the ’80s.

Using TOGAF the Wrong Way Could Cost You

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a great, as long as you’re comfortable doing a little nighttime reading, almost 800 pages worth of nighttime reading! Just to give you a taste of what you’d in for, you have to dig through more than 40 pages before figuring out what TOGAF is, “TOGAF provides the methods and tools for assisting in the acceptance, production, use, and maintenance of an enterprise architecture.”

If you’re building software, there’s only a handful of right ways to do it–TOGAF is one of them (another one is IBM’s RUP). But most organizations may find this framework a little too academic and unyielding for their environment. This is what happens, when a consortium (The Open Group) of really smart people get together to create a vendor neutral, open, standards-based framework.

What Every BA Should Know about Enterprise 2.0

There’s a lot hype around Enterprise 2.0, case in point, the $2,495 price tag to attend the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Hmm, what could I buy for that kind of money? How about a Nikon D90, and still have about $1,500 left over?

If you hear anyone use terms like Enterprise (Web) 2.0, it’s best to ask them what they mean. Enterprise 2.0 comprises social software as used in enterprise in a business contexts. Think of it as Social Media, Facebook and such for the workplace. Which (to me at least) makes things very interesting.

What Every BA Should Know about Software as a Service

I’m a Business Architect (BA)–I don’t need to know technology, you say. Not true, as a BA, knowing the advantages and the disadvantages of a technology will help you craft a better business solution.

Software as a Service (SaaS), discussed briefly in the Cloud Computing post is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand, example, Salesforce.com.

What Every BA Should Know about Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing recently took a hit with the Microsoft/T-Mobile/Sidekick data loss debacle. It turns out, debacle had less to do with Cloud Computing, and more to do with bad IT practice.

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. There are three categories of  services.

What Every BA Should Know about Grid Computing

No, this post is not about how the enhancements to the power grid will run your data center better. That’s not the “grid” I’m writing about. Grid computing is the combination of computer resources from multiple domains applied to a common task, that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or the need to process large amounts of data.

How Does Business Architecture Help Software Development?

Business Architecture is something the management consulting-types do, right? Well yes, but it’s also a critical part of the Enterprise Architecture framework. It’s important because it is the primary contributor to the requirement management process, and everyone in the software development wheel is dependent on the requirements. Business Architects does this by defining the Vision,  Modeling the Business , and considering existing business patterns. I’ll post the detail steps for these in a separate post.

What Every BA Should Know about Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

I know what you’re thinking, I’m a Business Architect, why would I need to know about technology. You need to know because just like the organization that pays your bill is your customer, the technology team is also your customer. If you don’t understand how the consume information, you would not be able to communicate the business need the right way. First step in better communication is to understand bit of their language.

This is the first part of the Technology Architecture series. There are plenty of technical explanations of design philosophies out there. This series of posts plans to cut thought the jargon and attempts to share the business benefits of these technologies and why BAs should care. There have been a lot of excitement around SOA, something I find widely misunderstood.

Software Frameworks Every BA Ought to Know – Six Sigma

Not another framework! Yes, there are many software development frameworks out there. As a consultant, I’ve run across many at customer sites. My thoughts on frameworks are, there are a finite number of ways to do the right thing, and no one framework is right for every project.  However, to make sure your are speaking the same language as your customers, it is prudent to know a little about some of these popular frameworks. This post is the first part of the software development framework series, covering Six Sigma.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma seeks to improve quality of processes by identifying and removing the defects in business process using methods like statistical. It has a fun classification for its practitioners (i.e. “Black Belts”, “Green Belts”) — well, it would be funny if it didn’t take itself so seriously. As a byproduct, this has spawned a thriving certification industry.

What is Business Architecture?

Business Architecture (BA) is a framework to model the business strategy, governance, organization and key business processes. It provides a common understanding of what the business does, and how it does it.

Strategy deals with definition of the enterprise, providing a framework for operational and change activity, and a long-term view for direction setting. Governance deals with ensuring that the business processes adhere to relevant business regulation. Organization is a collection of resources with responsibility, goals, and all of it is measurable.