davidaayers / ea-talk

A conference talk for Enterprise Architects on how to deal with our changing technology world

Enterprise Architecture in a Devops Time

Presented by: David Ayers
Innovative Technology Professional | Passionate Lifelong Learner | Giant Nerd
Full Bio
@iamagiantnerd, [email protected]

This is a talk directed toward Enterprise Architects about how to deal with a world that has moved their cheese.

This repo contains the talk itself, as well as the repo used to create the examples included in the talk.

Talk Abstract

Enterprise Architects live in a confusing time. Teams are being told to pick their own stacks and build however they want (as long as they maintain it, DevOps style). How must EA evolve? Learn the five areas where EA can focus their time to help organizations maximize their technology investments.

Talk Description

Enterprise Architecture is at a crossroads, especially in organizations which do a lot of custom software development. The DevOps movement, combined with design thinking and agile organizational design a has left a lot of EA professionals scratching their head on how they can add value and continue to provide governance and guidance to the technology teams.

One of the problems is what EA even means -- a quick google search will reveal a multitude of definitions. I like Mark Schwartz's definition, from the book A Seat At The Table:

"Today's EA is the set of technology capabilities the enterprise has in place now, including its latent capabilities - the things that will make it agile in meeting future needs"

Let's face it, EA must evolve to work in this new world. In this talk, you will learn five areas where EA professionals (and anyone in your technology organization with an interest in architecture) can focus on to help bring value to your organization, and "make it agile" for meeting future needs:

• Build a disciple around recording architectural decisions using Lightweight Architecture Decision Records
• Create a guild of like-minded individuals to help socialize architectural decisions
  • Things like code standards, API design, tools -- don't dictate from the ivory tower
  • Work with the people who care and help cultivate a culture of artisanship
• Transition from thought leaders to practitioners -- working with teams (especially in the inception of projects) to guide their decisions and socialize tribal knowledge
• Focus on the seams between teams & systems -- learn where the bounded contexts interact and spend time ensuring teams & systems are communicating in healthy ways
• Lead the creation of reference implementations that serve as starting points for common stacks in your environment
  • Keep them up to date as norms evolve, which they will

Together, we can carve out a new role for EA in a world where DevOps moved EA's cheese; a role where EA moves from their ivory tower to becoming practitioners working side-by-side with teams to deliver value to the enterprise.

Links:

The following links are referenced in the presentation, or might be useful to explore to learn more about the topics that are covered:

• Definitions of Enterprise Architecture:
  • http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/What_Is_Enterprise_Architecture.htm
  • https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2017/7/devops-requires-dumping-old-it-leadership-ideas
• Original Blog Post about ADRs:
  • Michael Nygard: http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2011/11/15/documenting-architecture-decisions
  • Picture of Michael taken from his public github profile: https://github.com/mtnygard
• Tools:
  • Command line ADR tool: https://github.com/npryce/adr-tools
  • Compendium of ADR information: https://adr.github.io/
• Real world examples of ADRs:
  • https://github.com/npryce/adr-tools/tree/master/doc/adr
  • https://github.com/arachne-framework/architecture
  • https://github.com/marc-bouvier/trello2eisenhower/tree/master/adr
  • https://github.com/hilton/scripting-docs/tree/master/ADR
• Article about Architecture Guilds & ADRs at scale @ Comcast
  • https://www.infoq.com/articles/architecture-guild-800-friends/

Similar Talks:

I have given several different versions of this talk in different formats; the others are not focused on EA professions.

The awesome Denise Yu did this sketchnote of a version of this talk at the #LeadDevNewYork conference, and she kindly agreed to let me save it here. Check out her art on her website: http://www.deniseyu.io/art

Credits:

Icons:

• Emoji icons by Joypixels
• Dance party icon by Adioma

Footnote

The title is a riff on "Lovers in a Dangerous Time", a song by Bruce Cockburn, and covered by the Barenaked Ladies, which is where I first heard it.