EA Practitioners Conference - Johannesburg 2013

This presentation includes various global case studies that demonstrate how business value is delivered through enterprise architecture. It will focus on the use of open standards such as TOGAF, and will provide a view across industry sectors giving insight into some current, international industry trends. In addition, the key lessons from each case study will be shared.

Business and Enterprise Architects use a wide variety of models and representations to perform analysis and engage business leaders. Often these do not provide new insights which are derivable from the underlying data. This talk introduces a new technique - polymetric modelling, which vastly improves the value of models without increasing the effort. Rich examples are included.

Organisations invest thousands on efforts to document aspects of their architectures and yet many do not consider the benefits of collaboration or the value of existing investments in their architectures. This presentation will focus on the benefits that are being achieved in healthcare and mining with the creation and use of standards for these industries. We will also look at the background and the process that was followed, as well as the drivers that sparked the collaboration. The two areas are similar but different in many aspects - the mining collaboration is global and is led by The Open Group while the healthcare collaboration is geographic and specific. The presentation will provide the audience with a view of these approaches, how they are showing value for the participating organisations and how we can learn from their application in our own environments.

Cyber Security is one of the major challenges facing organisations within all industries. This presentation will examine the integration of an Enterprise Architecture approach with an Enterprise Security Architecture approach (TOGAF and SABSA) and propose a generic framework. The objectives of integrating these approaches include; the creation of an overall architectural view of the organisation, the mitigation of security risks (Cyber Security) using Enterprise Security Architecture, and the maintenance of a secure business environment.

EA practices across the globe face a similar challenge...what to make of all of the information gathered.
EA will deliver value when a single repository exists, with information sets being maintained by stakeholders with a vested interest in the accuracy.
Information must:
• provide for a moderated process, translating business requirements into IT initiatives and analysing the impact on the IT landscape.
• visualize the future-state business architecture and demonstrate gaps between this and the current state.
• facilitate the discussion of business process and business model changes to effectively facilitate business process planning.
• represents the various architectural layers, with views tailored for the various stakeholder requirements.
• be readily accessible and geared towards enabling decision-makers to make informed and cost reducing choices.
• reduce complexity, enabling a CIO to a business-driven executive instead of a technical-focused manager.
The challenge is to have the right tools to elegantly serve and support the business.

In the “Design Thinking” approach, it is assumed that the organisation is a multi-purpose system, and that the thinking, designing and planning process should take into account the objectives of all stakeholders, the containing whole, and society in general. The planning process must offer an approach to resolving the conflicts that are inevitable in a multi-purpose system.
The significance of the concept is the ability for all members of a team to actively participate in designing a new model so that it is co-owned, innovative, implementable and
responsive to changing contexts.
The “Design Thinking” approach recognises that organisations’ face growing complexities and “wicked problems”. You cannot solve wicked problems – you can only dissolve them. Dissolution can only be achieved through re-designing the system. Re-design can only be achieved through an understanding of SOCIAL SYSTEMS.