8 takeaways from IRM UK’s Enterprise Architecture Conference Europe 2016

Last month I was lucky enough to attend the IRM UK Enterprise Architecture (EA) Conference 2016 in London. Hosting one of the biggest EA conferences in Europe, it provided a great opportunity to get up to date with the latest developments, meet thought leaders and learn from real case studies.

Recognising my volunteer experience at the British Computer Society (BCS), the BCS Enterprise Architecture Specialist Group granted me a ticket to attend the first two days of the conference. Putting it in a nutshell, it was a truly global event with delegates from all continents, with Antarctica as the one exception.

This year, the EA conference was co-located with the Business Process Management (BPM) conference, which made it a unique event providing diverse and wide-ranging perspectives on EA, Business Architecture and BPM. Five event tracks and over 70 conference sessions (incl. 30 case studies) made it extremely difficult to choose where to put my focus. Unfortunately, I could not be in different rooms at the same time. However, amongst the ones I did manage to attend, quite a few keynotes really stood out. Below is my selection of eight key takeaways from the IRM UK EA Conference 2016:

1. Change Management is integral with EA and BPM 

The Conference Welcome speech by Roger Burlton and Chris Potts was followed by a keynote from Ashley Braganza, Professor of Organisational Transformation at Brunel Business School. Ashley spoke about what do EA, BPM and Project Management have in common and he concluded that it is a Change. Exploring Change Management as the common thread between the EA, BPM and PM disciplines, Ashley challenged some tried and tested, taken-for-granted models of change. While acknowledging the importance of Change Management in most IT initiatives, he summarised the mind-set challenge as a disconnect between 21st century technology, 20th century management processes and 19th century management principles.

2. Useful Business Architecture model can be effectively developed in 4 months

Andrew Pincott, Director of Business Capability at Gazprom Marketing & Trading, then introduced an approach that helped GM&T to produce a Business Architecture model in as little as four months with limited resources. Having lack of information and no processes written down could be seen as an issue, but on the other hand the team was able to create the model it their own way. Business Architects engaged stakeholders from across the business and used a standard modelling tool to ensure their model was complete, correct and useful.

3. EA is dead! Long live Business Design? 

The irony is that one of the core disciplines of Enterprise Architecture is to create a common language - yet so often the term “Enterprise Architecture” is misunderstood. In their discussion, Lorne Mitchell and Michael Noonan argued that Design is a more creative job, rather than Architecture and perhaps EA can be renamed into Business Design.

4. EA can learn from the Game of Chess

My second day started with a keynote from Gerben Wierda, the author of the classic book on ArchiMate, “Mastering ArchiMate”. He begun with a short video "Why EA?", which clearly explained the role of EA in an organisation. He then used a chess analogy to distinguish a good and a not so good architects. Every chess player knows how the pieces move, but good chess players also have a sense of which the best move is. Similarly, top architects have a feeling on potential opportunities.

5. Anything Architecture framework by John A. Zachman

John A. Zachman, an originator of EA, also spoke at the conference and presented a slightly edited version of his framework. Surprisingly, he did not claim that he invented EA. John just said that he happened to see a pattern. And this pattern can be applied not only to technological issues, but to anything. In fact, in his keynote John A. Zachman presented the Anything Architecture framework!

6. Keeping people engaged is vital in building a Solution Architecture practice

Presenting their own key study, Craig Rollason, Solution Architect at National Grid, and Annabel Fears, Resourcing Lead at National Grid, spoke on how a Solution Architecture practice was built in the company. Interesting to note, apart from traditional roles, they also had a Standards Lead, who looked after people being equipped with optimised processes, useful tools and templates driving excellence and a Resourcing Lead, who ensured right people are on right jobs.

7. ArchiMate 3.0 Specification released

One of the highlights of the conference was Marc Lankhorst and Andrew Josey introducing the new version of the ArchiMate modelling language. The major update in ArchiMate 3.0 is an addition of Strategy layer and Physical Technology layer. The former one brings alignment with TOGAF, BizBOK and BMM and enables to model Resources, Business Capabilities and Courses of Action. The latter layer allows to represent physical assets such as Materials, Facilities, Equipment and Distribution Network. Amongst the other updates, the new version includes improved usability and consistency across the language and notation and overall looks very promising!

8. EA in Urban Areas is a hot research topic

Last but by no means least Dr. Markus Helfert, a Lecturer in Information Systems at the School of Computing, Dublin City University, spoke on EA in Smart Cities. Recently, Markus did a study with Dell on Metropolitan Area Enterprise Architectures, looking into different Smart City’s initiatives: Energy, Mobility, Water, Public Services and Buildings. With projections indicating that over 70% of world’s population would live in urban areas by 2050, research around applying EA practices within the Urban areas has had growing interest as stakeholder preferences and interests play a crucial role in shaping governance and in informing strategic priorities.

Overall, it was a great event that brought practitioners, experts and thought-leaders together from around the world. There was a right balance between research, case studies and IT solution providers and I could not think of any other conference that covered EA initiatives is so much detail. Definitely worth attending next year if you have a chance!