The Open Group Conference, London
22nd Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference

Highlights of the Plenary, Day 3
(Wednesday April 29)

The second day of The Open Group’s 22nd Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference was based on streams covering EA in the Government and Public Sector, EA Modeling and Analysis with ArchiMate®, SOA, EA Development, Tools for Enterprise Architecture, and Cloud Computing. Attendees gathered once again at the Central Hall Westminster in London.

Dr. Chris Harding, Forum Director for SOA and Semantic Interoperability, The Open Group, began the SOA stream with his presentation SOA Comes of Age: Introducing the SOA Source Book. He gave The Open Group’s perspective on SOA and why it is important. Some of the benefits of SOA include improved information flow, the ability to expose internal functionality, organizational flexibility, lower costs, and easier system upgrades. Chris reviewed the SOA Source Book, which was released today and includes an introduction to the SOA Governance Reference Model and SOA Governance Vitality Method. Future developments for SOA include organic enterprise architecture and open services market.

The session Joining up Delivery to Service Personnel and Veterans was given by John McNaughton, The Salamander Organization, UK, and Phil Marks, SPVA (Service Personnel & Veterans Agency) Strategy. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) has used architectural frameworks for years, and increasingly a number of projects have used these frameworks to support major investment decisions. However, several challenges faced the MoD’s service personnel administration’s IT systems, including legacy systems and legislation, a largescale administrative system rollout with major challenges, and the need to broaden and deepen the capabilities. Working together, Salamander and the SPVA have used enterprise architecture as the means to the end of what is a very complex, sophisticated project that involves complicated collections of people. The underlying data, in particular, has been highly valuable in its re-use. By applying architecture methods to real problems that deliver real benefits, they have created pull from the business and not push from the architects. The decision-making is better informed and more accurate, and they are inspiring an approach that scales and grows the enterprise.

In his presentation Using Targeted EA to Focus the Client on their Strategic Objectives, Grant Brown, Senior Manager, Performance Improvement Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers, gave a case study in which an EA approach was used to enable a client – a large central government program – to link their strategic objectives with required business and IT services. New IT capabilities can enhance individual processes, which can in turn support one or many new processes, but linking these capabilities to processes and underlying IT services and requirements is usually where clients lose their focus. Thus Grant and his colleagues helped the public-sector client map from capabilities to strategic objectives and then aligned this with parts of TOGAF™. Notably, he said, you do not have to complete an entire EA framework to add value to a client – selecting the most relevant aspects of an EA framework allows quick progress and a useful model can be delivered to the client. They also mapped business capabilities to processes and high-level objectives, allowing the client to prioritize each solution module by the benefit(s) it delivered and then customize programs accordingly. Ultimately, the EA framework helped assess the current state of EA maturity, form goals, and create a roadmap of how to achieve the goals.

In the afternoon session Tools for Enterprise Architecture, Remco Blom, EA Consultant, BiZZdesign, spoke about choosing and using tools for creating an enterprise architecture. A survey of the room showed that not many session attendees are using EA-specific tools to model and visualize EA, and many are using other tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. An EA practice does not start with tools, but rather sees indicators that it needs tools, such as having a group of architects, a federated environment, and/or regular talks with strategic management. He advised choosing tools that suit the specific EA maturity and can grow with it. The tools should be relevant to the goal of the EA and support the concepts and frameworks. Oftentimes, he noted, less is more when choosing which concepts and frameworks to support. Examples of other requirements for selecting the appropriate tools include functionality, language, and contractual obligations. Most importantly, Remco said, is recognizing the key requirements for the specific organization and then being selective in choosing only certain EA tools to best complement those needs.

Martin van den Berg, Architecture Service Line Manager, Sogeti, Netherlands, gave his presentation Project Start Architecture: The Killer Application for EA in the EA Development stream. He explained what Project Start Architecture (PSA) is and why it has been such a success. PSA is an architecture product that describes the specific subset of projects – it tries to create a subset of the reference architecture for specifically one project. It is on the operational side of things rather than the strategic. PSA’s objective is to provide the EA project with a well-defined, relevant, and practical scope so that the project results fit into the bigger picture within the organization. This enables the client to implement changes in a structured fashion and also enables the management to commit to and decide on target solutions, in an early stage of the project. Martin showed how PSA has been successfully used in the Dutch government. Many people, he said, who have used PSA do not want to start subsequent EA programs without the PSA. For most users, the two chief benefits have been the dramatically increased acceptance of the architecture practice and the help it lends project managers in making a better project plan.

Rounding out the day in the Cloud Computing stream was Scott Radeztsky, PhD, Sun Principal Engineer, Chief Technologist, Americas Systems Engineering, Sun Microsystems, Inc., with his session Whitebeards and Cloudsters: Is Enterprise Architecture Relevant in the Cloud? With cloud computing nearly ubiquitous but still unknown in terms of true potential, this session created a dialog in which attendees could give feedback on what The Open Group should be doing in terms of defining their stance on Cloud Computing. As the host of the stream – Dave Lounsbury, The Open Group – put it, The Open Group wants to help members when their companies ask: "What are we going to do about the cloud? What is The Open Group’s position and/or deliverables?" Scott posed several questions for the room to discuss, including:

• Does Cloud Computing present an opportunity to change or extend the mission of The Open Group?
• What are the benefits to stepping out in front to own and drive elements of open Cloud Computing?
• Is there a single Cloud Computing element that needs The Open Group’s attention, or should The Open Group organize to address a broad set of initiatives?
• Is speed and effectiveness best achieved by adding a little cloud to each working group? Or by making a new, separate group for it?

A lively discussion was had about what sort of role The Open Group should take, with a little more than half of attendees saying that The Open Group should take a leadership role and the other half preferring that The Open Group remain a community member for now. Of note was the comment that no organization currently is bridging between cloud technical capabilities and business needs and processes, so that could be a unique niche for The Open Group. The Open Group leadership will continue to work out these questions.