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Notes on Enterprise Architecture, Business Alignment, Interesting Trends, and anything else that interests me this week...
On the federated ownership of a conceptual domain
As I mentioned in my last post, we have produced an interesting conceptual model of IT as a...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/22/2009
Ship It!
It's been a while since I was blogging regularly. The reason: I was in a ship cycle. As we...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/16/2009
An examination of the OMG Business Motivation Model
Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft loves standards. We don’t always play well with...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 01/09/2009
Feedback requested: Information driven process design
An esteemed associate of mine asked me recently if I believe that a conceptual information model,...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/17/2008
Understanding SOBA
Just ran across, quite by accident, a blog post from last spring from Johan den Haan on the...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/05/2008
Adopting a new technology like Oslo
Sometimes, when something new comes along, the best way to see it being useful is to see it being...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 12/03/2008
Creating a distinction between business services and SOA services
I'm always a bit dismayed when I hear the following terms mixed up, or combined: SOA service and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/30/2008
Software Reflects The Process That Creates It
Of all the ‘laws of software’ that I subscribe to, this one is one of the most fundamental, and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/26/2008
Using the PMO to measure the behavior of the customer
There are a great many products on the market these days that provide information about a set of...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/22/2008
The business value of elegant design
In my last post, I highlighted the design process, suggesting that designers and architects should...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 11/03/2008
The bizarre assumption of functional decomposition
I ran into a friend today and, as friends often do, we let our conversation wander over the...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 10/28/2008
Non-Functional Requirements: the "All-Other" classification
I've seen various taxonomies of requirements. Like all taxonomies, any set of requirement...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 10/14/2008
"Correct" is a point of view
My friends in the Agile community have succeeded in drilling a concept into my thick skull so deeply...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 10/11/2008
Alignment - the missing Viewpoint
The (ISO Standard) RM-ODP model is a powerful and well reasoned mechanism for creating Architectural...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 10/06/2008
Understanding Governance as Decision Rights
Todd Biske, whom I respect for his writings on SOA, seemed to miss the mark in his recent blog post...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 10/04/2008
Extending Professional Software Architecture
Imagine a time when building architecture meant "sketches" that would vary from one...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 10/03/2008
Input sought: Actor - Role - Process Activity... an interesting domain model question
I have an open question. I'd love to get community feedback. A process can be decomposed into...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/29/2008
It takes a village to raise an idiot (Wiki Non Wisdom)
I love wiki technology. I'm an editor on Wikipedia and I enjoy contributing to community-based...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/26/2008
On IEEE-1471
[I tore down this article.]
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/24/2008
EA Poster - The Business Functions of Enterprise Architecture
Not long ago, I got an e-mail from someone I had not met, directed from this blog. He had used the...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/17/2008
Clarifying the Concept of Metadata
Metadata is a difficult word to define, or so it would appear. After all, why is it that the best...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/17/2008
Civil Engineering Analogy to Enterprise Architecture: Flawed
It is typical to see comparisons of Civil Engineering to Enterprise Architecture. A number of...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/13/2008
How BPM does, and does not, support people
Kudos to Andrea Westernien on her blog about the disjoint between the work that people do and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/12/2008
What do .Net Solution Architects need to know?
A friend and colleague, J.D. Meyer, asked me to consider this question, and I have to admit that...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/08/2008
Applying DDD to IT Management: First failure
I always learn more from failure than from success. In that spirit, I'll share a (small) failure...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 09/03/2008
Working in the dark
If we listen to smart people who create development processes, we hear things like "collect...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 08/30/2008
Traceability, the Solution Model, and Metamodeling
It is nice to point out, on occasion, when two different leaders in the architecture community are...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 08/26/2008
Malik's Laws of Service Oriented Architecture
No one but you will build the services you need in time for you to use them If you build a service...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 08/21/2008
Merging EA Frameworks
I've spent some time of late looking at various EA frameworks. Nothing perfect out there yet, but...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 08/05/2008
Enterprise SOA needs a Federated Evolutionary Modeling Environment
I've been thinking a lot lately about the gap between "what we have" and "what we need" in the...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/30/2008
Excellence depends on the environment you are in
Not long ago, I was asked an interesting question about our Enterprise Architecture team. The...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/30/2008
Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody
This is the story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/26/2008
Clarifying the Use Case
A Use case is a cool thing. A little too cool. The term has been occasionally misused,...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/23/2008
Using Business Process Models as the source for software requirements
Requirements elicitation is a critical, yet under-appreciated, activity. A core capability of...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/16/2008
Building Conceptual Models, Building Relationships
Building teamwork, at the enterprise level, is a tricky thing. As a project team comes together to...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/15/2008
Graduation
Kind of a personal blog today. My wife just graduated from Lake Washington Technical...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/14/2008
Growing Rice in the Desert - the Garden of BPM
Apparently, I ticked off Bruce Silver. In case you haven't heard of the fellow, as I had not, Bruce...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/11/2008
As the sun rises on Web2.0, what to do about companies that 'don't play along?'
Content comes from many places, including news sites, media companies, and individual contributors....
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/08/2008
Preventing Ownerless Activities -- the "Blame the Computer" process modeling antipattern - part 2
In a prior post, I described a process modeling antipattern which I called "Blame the Computer." The...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/06/2008
Why Automated BPM will never live up to its hype
I like point out really nutty ideas, even when a lot of people have spent a lot of time investing in...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 07/05/2008
New eyes on an old favorite
A couple of years ago, Phillippe Krutchen 'reinterpreted' the Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tsu for Software...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/29/2008
Blame the Computer: A Business Process Modeling Anti-pattern
Whenever you model a business process, it is inevitable that, sooner or later, you will come to an...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/26/2008
Open Question: Common vocabulary: Blessing or Curse?
Requirements are an interesting thing. We cannot assume that we understand the business, and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/21/2008
The Usefulness of the Use Case?
I'm a big fan of use cases. Great for describing how software is used, and puts context around...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/17/2008
An open question about Enterprise Architecture, the noun
I frequently discuss EA as a business function, including in my last post. However, one...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/12/2008
One EA Team, Three EA Functions
In my opinion, a business function can often be best understood by describing the processes that...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 06/11/2008
The non-overlapping responsibility set: Solution Architect and Enterprise Architect
Recently, Mike Walker posted a blog entry on the difference between Enterprise Architect and...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/30/2008
Example of modeling requirements in a process diagram
We use process models for lots of things. One is simply to understand the processes we have and to...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/22/2008
How FEA handles Capability and Process Modeling
A few weeks ago, in a blog post, I asked about the relationship between business process modeling...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/19/2008
IT to Business: "I won't read your mind"
In any relationship, it is dangerous for one side to "decide" what the other one...
Author: Nick Malik Date: 05/17/2008