What's Your Baseline?

A bridge to our last episode with Nick Reed and Luca de Risi, who are currently going through this process - as Luca has explicitly stated in the show 😀 Mergers & Acquisitions are one of the core EA use cases and brings the EA folks in the spotlight and out of the basement (at least that is where most people assume that they live in). But what happens then? What do these people do the rest of their time? How do they add value? These are topics that we discuss in the latest episode of the podcast, including a quick review of the "sister episode" in which we looked at BPM use cases. So, long story short, go to your podcatcher of choice and have a listen/watch Episode 78 "EA Use Cases" to learn more... #businessprocessmanagement #enterprisearchitecture J-M Erlendson Piotr Królikowski - CGCE™ DGBS™ Marcus Zschuckelt Babar Sultan Khuram “KB” Babar Kolawole Oyebode, MBA, PSPO, PSM, MBCS Patrick M. Dr. Anna Potekhina Solange Mercier-Gallay Simge Gürkaya Tekgöz

One of the misconceptions of Enterprise Architects is that they are all "just nerds" and they are only interested in technology. While there are some aspects of this (I don't want to deny this notion), there is more that EAs do or should do. For example, someone needs to figure out what that next great improvement idea means for the existing architecture (process, risk, org, app, tech, ...) and how this will be accomplished in programs and projects. But what is the key thing that you need to manage and keep a consistent perspective? It are capabilities and how they determine the decisions on where to spend a limited budget on. Do you agree? Please let us know in the comments. Oh, and while you're at it - Episode 78 "EA Use Cases" (which obviously covers more use cases) is now out wherever you get your podcasts :-) #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement J-M Erlendson Michael Schank Michael Idengren Keith Mangold Derek Amah Mike Steyn - Director and Principle Consultant Juuso Rantala Zbigniew Misiak Kalyan Manepally Stephen Kearney

OK, this seems to be a bit redundant because I spoke about this in the announcement for the current episode - which is out now BTW. But this topic is a question that I think about for almost two decades now and haven't found an answer for: *WHY* is it that EA still so immature even after 40+ years? My hunch is that it lies in the positioning - "EA" is for most folks (and definitely for the EA tool vendors) mostly "IT stuff" and the regular business person doesn't care about that. Things just have to work. On top of it -and I am guilty as charged here as well- it is hard to communicate the value if the initial idea doesn't gather interest in the first place. And then you have the fight about who gets credit for what: is Business Architecture a part of EA? Is Process Mining a part of BPM (and therefore also EA)? I am curious what you think - please add your thoughts in the comments. And in the meantime, listen to Episode 78 "EA Use Cases" to get a refresher on our thinking on this topic. It is available now wherever you get your podcasts (links below). #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement J-M Erlendson Laurie Kelly Eric Kloster Gordon Cooper Luca de Risi Nick Reed Philip Cullens Conrad Langhammer Steve Oliver Michael Fulton

I know that this might be a cultural issue, but I don't see a lot of planning when it comes to projects anymore. Everything is "Agile" and I don't see that things are seen through that often. Which is bad, because one of the promises of EA (and BPM) is that someone understands how things are wired up and what to change, so that you accomplish your objective - which should always be business-driven FWIW. From my perspective this is a step back in the maturity of the discipline of Enterprise Architecture. And given the fact that the maturity was never high to start with, this is not a good development. To help a bit in this situation we have a new episode, in which Roland and J-M talk about EA use cases to give you some direction what you can do when you decide that this is a capability that you want to implement in your organization. Episode 78 "EA Use Cases" will be published next Monday, November 4. PS: Yes, this is the bookend to our previous episode about "BPM Use Cases" from a few months ago. The link to that episode is in the comments below ;-) #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement Nick Reed Luca de Risi Laurie Kelly Gordon Cooper Julian Haupt Sylvain Pillons Faizah nor Suhaimi Alexandra Limburg Angela Grollmisch Mark McGregor Libu Bhaskara

It is interesting when you have that moment of "looking behind the scenes" (aka thinking) of your guests during an interview, and in we can clearly see how Nick Reed sees the market evolving for EA tools. So, is the merger between Bizzdesign and MEGA International just the first step in a wave of consolidation in the next few years? Similar to what we've seen in the Process Mining space over the last 4-5 years? Listen to (watch) our interview with Nick and Luca de Risi in the latest episode of the podcast "Mergers & Acquisitions". Episode 77 is available wherever you get your podcasts now! #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement #processmining #mergersandacquisitions J-M Erlendson Karen Carbone Golden Richard Coyne Richard Rotella Jerome Caillot Jerome Calvet Gina Ringgenberg Brian R. Ricardo Gutiérrez Luciano Panetti

For most people in an organization the announcement of a merger or being acquired/acquiring another player (competitor!) in your market might come with a shock. So, how do you prepare your organization for this major event? That was one of the topics that we discussed with Luca and Nick in our latest episode when we talked about Mergers & Acquisitions in general and the current merger between Bizzdesign and MEGA International (and their unnamed third party) especially. There are a lot of additional tips and tricks that both share with us in the latest episode of our podcast - Episode 77 "Mergers & Acquisitions" is available wherever you get your podcasts now! #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement #organizationalchangemanagement J-M Erlendson Jehane Adam Eric Roovers Santiago Madruga Marco Bunt Cynthia Cyr Jenny Kanzog Eli Rizk Rohit Ahuja Phoenix Stebbins Virginie Hogg Alexander Bielowski

There was a big splash in the Enterprise Architecture tool market a few weeks ago - BizzDesign announced that they will merge with Mega and an unnamed third party (which we will learn about in Q4 soon, but cannot name here at this time). But why these two (three) players and why now? Since we know some people in the industry, I reached out to Luca de Risi from MEGA International and we quickly came up with the idea of doing a show about Mergers & Acquisitions and not only talk about the current example, but also more generally about ownership models, how M&A comes together, and what that means for the involved organizations. As a second guest we invited Nick Reed from Bizzdesign and we had a very lively conversation about the topic at hand :-) Episode 77 "Mergers & Acquisitions" is now available wherever you get your podcasts (links in the comments below). #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement Caspar Jans Mark McGregor Dr. Bernhard Schaffrik Gérard LAPI EMO Alejandra Ospina Sam Phillippi Darrin Shumay Hugh Kirkpatrick Simon Lessard Arvind Soni

Well, there was a of surprise in EA land a few weeks ago, when a large three-party merger was announced. It also seems that the consolidation ship has moved on from the Process Mining market to EA now. In the next episode we have two guests, who just have been through that process, and we are happy to announce that Luca de Risi from MEGA International and Nick Reed from Bizzdesign are on our little show soon. They are obviously two of the main players of the merger that I mentioned above, but we were curious how the whole M&A thing works, while we were happy to have their current life as case study "as it happens" :-) Episode 77 "Mergers & Acquisitions" will be out wherever you get your podcasts next Monday, October 21. #enterprisearchitecture #businessprocessmanagement #processmining J-M Erlendson Mark McGregor Jerry Rutkowski Philip Cullens Karen Carbone Golden Arvind Soni Stefan Cordes Stefan Sigg Virginie Hogg

Building architecture structures and content is just useless work for people living in their ivory tower. They don't have any real-world application. Well, sorry for breaking your heart, but that is not true. As our guest, Dr. Russell Gomersall, correctly stated, these artifacts (like business processes) act like a shared language in organizations. They are the Lingua Franca / Esperanto of business and will help align not only the people, but help finding and closing gaps ... in business and technology. So why don't you use it in your organization? This and many more misconceptions were the content of the conversation that we had with Caspar Jans and Dr. Russell Gomersall from the BPM360Podcast in the latest episode of our podcast. Go and listen to it wherever you get your podcasts ... it will be entertaining, I promise! #businessprocessmanagement #enterprisearchitecture #processmining Ulf Henningsen Chris Ottesen, PMP, CBPP, SA Marc Redemann Phuong Nadeau Ellen Pelletier J-M Erlendson Karl Jaufmann Giannis Doulamis Amardeep Modi Shoeb Javed

Ohhhh - do we see an extension of the podcast in the making? There are multiple ways of spreading the word about #businessprocessmanagement and #enterprisearchitecture, but sometimes a good old fashioned dead tree (or its more modern cousin of dead pixels in an e-book app) is a good start for someone who is new to these topics. Plus you can read it offline in a plan/train (not automobile when you're driving!) and have it as a reference available. I am wondering who of our followers would be interested in that? PS: Since this will take a while, why don't you have a listen to the current episode with Caspar and Russell to shorten the time? And there will be a few more episodes until the release of Roland's musings ...