Category Archives: Blog

Using TOGAF® Framework as Tool for Business Transformation….

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Joint introductory webinar with KnowledgeHut on 23 Jan 2015.

Like all presentations mostly end up starting with a glitch , this one also started with one . Please watch it from 3:51 onwards.

Overview:

Business is always in a constant state of flux- more so these days, with disruption happening all around. How do you move from your AS IS state to TO BE architecture in your enterprise transformational journey? What mix and match of people, processes and technology will you blend together, and in what proportion, to drive enterprise value to deliver transformational results? TOGAF® framwork has a suite of tools that can help architects to chalk out the architectural roadmap for enterprise success. This talk will also focus on how agility is an underlying thread in this framework, and how value is delivered incrementally, making the process robust and bankable.

This webinar is an introductory session to walk one through how TOGAF® as an enterprise architecture framework has proven best practices that can be used to drive results.

Key Takeaways:

Exposes the audience to the features of TOGAF® framework which help plug business technology gaps.
– How TOGAF® Standard has agility at its core to drive transformational results.
– Why it is a good skill and knowledge for a seasoned IT professional to have in their kitty.

References / Acknowledgements

1. www.opengroup.com/togaf
2. http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Industry-Solutions-and-Trends/Meatballs-and-Spaghetti-how-to-untangle-the-cloud/ba-p/121808
3. Roger Sessions — http:/msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479371.aspx/

SDET a step towards creating a self Organizing team…

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Who is an SDET ( Software Developer Engineer in Test / Software Design Engineer in Test) ? Initially started at Microsoft many companies have these job titles these days. Watch a short video on how this role forms one step towards moving self organizing teams. A pure tester alone or developer alone role is fast fading and instead one needs to be a mix of both. End goal is to ship highest quality code just as in engineering , we cannot say that the bridge has only 50 % quality , the engineers lacked focus when it was built. Similarly SDET is redefining the software engineering practice.

With Open Source One needs to be Generous -OSI days Bangalore 2014

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OSIdays

Attended the OSI days Bangalore. One of the places where it makes sense to host a conference where you can find a large numbers of people on any technology under the sun. Open source unifies the birds working on different tech stacks .NET , JAVA , ROR, PHP, LAMP,MEAN folks [ how mean or cheap can you get 🙂 with open source ] etc. Scripting all shades and Mobile App developers worth their app.

It was organized by EFY the magazine company primarily with other Open source vendors / sponsors with their stalls.Microsoft had a big stall along with Oracle and HP all out there hustling and trading their wares enticing developers to get hooked on their bandwagon. Microsoft had a dev camp where a set of exercises were loaded onto PCs which was open to developers to type , program the exercises and get a real world feel of how quick or easy it is to get your app moment. There were applications ranging from test programs to play around with Mongo DB, windows HTML mobile applications. Nice way to get developers to at least take a peek at your offerings.

And there were goodies like T-shirts, portable chargers and like to make it worth somebody’s time to try them.

It is not about who makes the box anymore.

HP Helium was out their doing their social marketing around the Helium Open Stack cloud. They have a strong private cloud offering with Open Stack as the standard and a lot of evangelizing around that was there to see.Tweet to get early bird prizes,quizzes,selfies randomly picked and prizes ranged from HP tablets to laptops in some cases. Over all it was a big change to see traditional companies playing the social game well , getting public attention on social media. With game changing and disruptive technologies all around HP has thrown their hat in the cloud arena with the Helium offering. As it is now “It is no longer about who makes the box”.The infrastructure game has changed forever with cloud adoption. Nobody wants the CAPEX with an expensive box in their premises unless it has a strong rational these days.The only way HP can push their Hardware capability into the markets is for people to go the private cloud way and then push their servers where it has a business use case. Overall a lot of action happening on the front with HP having partnered with Cloud foundry to make it happen among other key cloud initiatives Good to see large companies stepping up their game or risk being outpaced. Microsoft adopting the cloud game with Office 365 was spot on and help them stay in the game. Sure HP played their social media strategy well here and more so get developers to talk about you and the market will follow suit.

Notable misses from an Open Source conference were Redhat,Google,Python community but nevertheless it was a good representation overall. May be it is all that you can squeeze into a two day program with back to back parallel sessions.

Some random takeaways

1. Companies of all sizes and shapes are adopting open source. Some large companies now have an open source practice, Wipro had a stall there.

2. People choose the technology stack based on what they are comfortable while building products and not necessarily the best out there for a given problem. It is difficult for one to know what is good with rapid technology changes.

3. The shelf life of any product built with Open Stack is only a few months to a year. Then on they either get upgraded or move to something better.

4.Mostly backend business logic is still written in good old C,C++,Python,Java,COBOL and people do not tamper with them although new technology intrusion is always enticing.

5. GoLang preferred against Python where concurrency was an issue.Although Python measured up against GoLang with no CPU latency being there.

6. A lot of product ideas being thrown around and some folks detailed what their journey was like. Good comment was when someone said you adopted SMART technologies to get here, the response was it took us several years to get SMART. So it was never a overnight thing.

7.Stackoverflow and user forums for the Open Source technologies apart from Google GOD solved people steer clear of roadblocks and bottlenecks during their open source journey.

8. Although getting people to adopt open source is hard with no support but once the team adopts to the stack it works great and an unmatched ROI. Else your TCO is eaten away by the hardware/software vendors whom you are depended on. One mention here is a tool called sendy which costs around 60$ but once configured and setup you can send mail blasts to your email list for a lifetime with that initial cost.

9. You need to be generous to allow people to use your stuff for free and this promotes your to leverage on the collective strengths of an intelligent community whom you can bank on for updates , fixes , issues etc.

10. Leveraging  Open Source is a two way street it always works with both the parties being benefited Once you have an enhancement that serves the larger community you contribute back into the pool. Opportunity here is a two way street.

People pay for the shiny stuff large user base gets you marketing

You need to be generous to allow a large percentage of people to use and benefit from your goodies. Evernote , all the cloud storage option providers ( gmail, one drive, dropbox) all of these fall into this category. They get their revenues based on the premium few users and good ad strategy for them to allow people to use their stuff. This is more popular as the freemium model, keep a large part of it free but for the shiny wares on your stack charge a premium. You need to give to get back. It works the other way also as you can almost crowd source efforts on your development if the open source takes off. You do not have to employ the services of people by employing people to take care of enhancements , future releases, bug fixes. This is a good advertising strategy for people who do not have ad revenues. Keep your product free , get people to comment on it crib and better still have them validate it for you free and then decide which of the features of the product you want people to pay for it. Quite disruptive coming to think of it , if its well executed.

 

Moving from Strategy to Execution -TOGAF

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All enterprise architecture frameworks talk about this. TOGAF also has prescriptions for moving from strategy to execution. Here is a short snippet explaining the process and involves addressing various concerns generally such as domain , data , application and technology without going into all the details. Togaf calls going through this famously as BDAT. ( Business , Data , Application and Technology). More details here.

ROI on TOGAF Certification for an IT Professional….

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TOGAF_ROI

Most often get asked this question by experienced, very experienced and people with little experience folks on what happens to my career if you are certified in TOGAF 9.x ( version immaterial) . For that matter lets look at what is the value add from get that additional degree or title against your name that you get out of any certification or a degree.Most often you still need real world experience with it to make sense of any learning be it certifications or degrees.Some thoughts on what motivates people to look at acquiring these ….

1. Your resume looks impressive.                                                                                                           2. Potential job offers may flow for you in that direction                                                                           3. May get me a pay hike or increase or a lateral or job move.                                                             4. Gain knowledge and become a trusted authority or person and look like a seasoned IT professional who can now talk the same mumbo/jumbo and gain professional respect.                   5.Currently do not have the title of an architect / Want to move along the career as an architect and may be the certification can help                                                                                                   6.Have been entrenched deep down with a specific technology and domain and look forward to see the whole picture.

While the above are some common concerns. Lets look at the value proposition of TOGAF though not covering all aspects in its entirety.

TOGAF Elevator Pitch

TOGAF value explained in an elevator pitch can be stated as it is a methodology to manage your architecture while moving from AS IS to TO BE state. Mind you , your AS IS can be anything from that reflects your current IT landscape. You can be in anywhere on your journey towards accomplishing your mission and how do you go towards getting there all the while caring about agility and not keeping an eye on cost and accountability on your IT spend.

TOGAF helps one understand the nuances of IT transformations(digital is more cool now) and what is involved.

What does getting certified in TOGAF mean ? Industry values experience when it comes to solve complex problems out there at that the customer has. You as an architect has to step in and do the magic of having the right mix of people, process and technology to deliver what is needed to ease the end user pain point. Companies in the least value a person who has such certifications with the idea that such an exposure will help a person at least think in that direction instead of being raw with no experience except for some deep dive experience in say one particular area. It helps you have a T profile for an architect. Helps one scale from a solution architect to an enterprise architect. It helps you to look at the problem from a broader perspective of how it impacts the stakeholders in the company , outside , skills , technology and process to have them all work towards your mission /vision as a company.

A fool with a tool is still a fool – TOGAF No Exception

It is akin to a person clearing PMP need not necessarily be a good manager. As any framework it does expose people to a good set of principles while dealing with people , process and technology and the inherent value in applying them in practice. At the outset it is too general but with applying the organization context to it , it becomes meaningful. Which augurs with the sentiment that a fool with the tool is still a fool. Mere knowing the framework without knowing how it can be tailored for an organization is what makes it abstract for people not having the relevant experience in business and IT transformations. The other reason also being the maturity of the organization who tend to relate the pieces of the framework by the book in a prescriptive fashion without checking on what suits their organization context. Same with agile prescriptions where have heard people say scrum says so we do it. Not really checking on how much of it is really relevant in their particular context. Scrum purists may dismiss this as SCRUM BUT , reality is different and not necessarily by the book. Togaf does not inherently project itself as having a strong agile backdrop to it. But the principles are very much there and it is for the practitioners to present that flavor to the end audience with agility at its core.

Customer Sentiment – What do you know about my problem and context ?

As can be known from experience there can be no single silver bullet to IT transformations , each customer is a case study in itself. The larger the portfolio , the more difficult it is to straight jacket it into a group. Experience comes by walking alongside the customer apart from the knowledge at hand.They call this as Management by Walking Around ( MBWA) instead of an MBA alone.  TOGAF exposes architects to a methodology which mature organizations have used as best practice and earned value. Many of the companies in the fortune list have used it extensively and have tailored them to suit their stack and solve their individual issues.