Episode 12

The Role of Enterprise Architecture

Published on: 31st October, 2023

On this episode of @The Smart IT Podcast, I welcomed @Ramsay Millar, an expert in Enterprise Architecture (EA), to the show. Ramsay Millar is a global expert in the arena of digital transformations involving the collaboration of many business leaders, enterprise architects, business analysts, projects managers, solution architects, and software engineers since 1997. During his corporate career he performed in nearly every role in IT from Help Desk assistant, programmer, business analyst, project manager, computer operation manager, IT Director and CIO. In 2001 he founded his company INTEGRATE IT Inc. where he provides practice leadership in knowledge transfer, productivity tools, and providing consulting services to stand up the Enterprise Architecture capability for medium to very large-scale enterprises.

His insights discussed here are gathered from his extensive experience since entering the IT industry in 1980. Ramsay has delivered over 1,100 business and technology project assignments and mentored over 4,000 business architects, business analysts, enterprise architects, agile project managers, solution architects, and software engineers since 2001.

The many IT professionals who have worked with Ramsay appreciate his common sense, wide ranging industry skills, and experience. Our discussion talked about all things Enterprise Architecture (EA) and its critical role to the success of business transformation. We discussed several insightful areas, including:

Enterprise Architecture is vital to business transformation.
"You find what you love to do and you will never work again".
Don't be a late to the show and be ready to ride the wave. R&D experience is important and play with new tech and tools in sandboxes.
IT is a tough business to be in, you can never really catch up, and you don't always get credit for what goes right. It is a field that requires you to keep re-learning. If you like the challenge of continuing to learn, then IT is for you.
Architecture is everywhere. The human body has a architecture. Things you don't see that make our systems work. Architecture is nothing more than change, how to get where you want to go from where you currently are. We are still a young industry.
Chatted about Artificial Intelligence (AI). How AI will help EA. We will have lots of AI, i.e. Medial AI, personal AI, millions of AI.
AI is immature right now, models have not been trained well yet, and there is lot of bad data feeding systems.
AI can help us with the drudgery. Finding areas where you won't hire a human for, AI can help.
The question of the quality of data because a lot of it is bad. Maybe AI systems will produce bad results because of it.
A future where machines will fight other machines.
Talked about the history of business and technology transformation, fire, and the wheel!
Rapid rate of growth, however, humans have not evolved as fast as technology. We are animals that don't actually live in the digital world.
Digital transformation have been going for a long time. People underestimate amount of new ways of thinking required for all this change.
Transformation is just change. Real change is new functionality.
EA is a team sport, with tech as secondary. EA doesn't have not power, barely have influence, and often business takes the credit.
Lots of architecture is brittle. Lot of opportunity to clean up our environments and save money.
Cheaper and more efficient to do the right job behind the scenes.
Architect work horizontally, vertically, and in time dimensions.
Design Process. Design questions and considerations in building anything. EA behind the design.
How do you get into design without building it? Modeling everything to help experts how to design things.
Investment in EA is not that great and there are great benefits. Culture is the resistance to change.
Need for more Solution Architects to coordinate efforts with the business and experts.
The role of Project Managers (PM) and how they interact with EAs and Solution Architects (SA). EAs have to point out the risks to the business. EAs, PMs, and Business Analysts (BA) need to work together. Business-driven approach. Silos are contrary to architecture. These teams need to be aligned. Architecture works horizontally. The world is a horizontal world. Be sure to invite governance, risk, and compliance to the party.
We are at high risk when we don't work together. Also risk in not doing anything could lead to market disruption.

We wrapped up by discussing what Ramsay with the need for IT professionals to develop more people skills, such as communication and the need for the right attitude and aptitude to like to be humiliated over and over again. Business stay ahead by having EAs forward looking. It is cost efficient to invest in EA to avoid waste later. Good news is that more people in business understand tech. the power is not the name of the game, but the ability to bring people together and proving what is possible. CIO should be finding new insights for competitive advantage. Need more Solution Architects.

Hashtags

#enterprisearchitecture #ea #transformation #design

Brilliant Beam Media Syya Yasotornrat

Show Notes

Ramsay Millar on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramsay-millar-616b915/

INTEGRATE IT website

https://www.in2grateit.com/

Business Architecture Guild (BIZBOK)

https://www.businessarchitectureguild.org/

International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA)

https://iiba.org/