Last week, Todd Biske linked to my post, ”Is Enterprise Architecture Declarative or Imperative?” and added some of his thoughts in a post entitled “Transparency in Architecture.” In addition, Adnan Masood left a comment in the original post which made a similar point. Their point: Enterprise Architecture is declarative, but not always and it’s not that simple. Adnan agreed that EA is declarative at its best, but mentioned that the “sync up” process I referred to between EA and Solution Architects will have some imperative qualities. Todd also agreed that EA is declarative, but said “… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the path to execution falls to solution architects.” Instead, Todd said that EA should define both future state and some very coarse executable actions for achieving that future state. A great point, and I totally agree. The idea of “increasing constraints” as Todd puts it, is a good way to describe the healthy tension at the EA/ SA handoff. Our VP of IT calls this “Freedom within a Framework,” a term which I believe captures the essence of how EA can be declarative. We’re not going to sit in your code reviews, but we do care how you are using Enterprise Information and upon which platforms you are delivering solutions to our customers. I heard Gartner Analyst Anne Lapkin once state that EA constrains IT for the good of the business. So, If EA is both the Keepers of the Flame and the stewards of strategy, we have to care. And you, whomever you may be, should demand that we care so you can be free to care about what you need to, be it well-run projects, well-crafted and innovative solutions, or a well-thought-of and profitable IT organization.

The second part of Todd’s post discussed the topic of governance and how projects constrained by EA should be transparent. While I like this idea far better than being pulled into a million meetings (or, more importantly, making teams feel that they can’t be trusted and must be looked after), that kind of transparency is a tall order in most situations I’ve been in, which Todd also states. But I like this idea and can see its parallels to the concept of Information Radiators in agile software development. In the same way that I can wander into a war room or bullpen and find out basic and essential information about a project (backlog, burndown, etc), these “Architecture Radiators” could provide me with the information I would need to asses the state of the architecture of the project and track its evolution over time.

But that’s just theory… what would such a thing look like? It would have to be both simple to maintain and useful. I’ll have to think on this some more. In the meantime, does anyone have any ideas or examples from projects where these types of Information Radiators existed?

I am an avid reader of Joel on Software. I read the book and actively follow the blog. I admire Joel, his career and his willingness to speak his mind. I don’t always agree with Joel, but I always respect his opinion. He has a fundamental way of looking at seemingly complex things that can tend to oversimplify the issues, but they can also bring about understanding and foster discussion.

Apparently, his Language Wars post from last week upset DHH, a self-described “Emo Programmer,” because Joel claims that Ruby on Rails isn’t “Enterprisey” enough. David doesn’t seem to agree and claimed that Joel’s post was a textbook example of FUD in action. If this turns into Adam Curry v. Dave Winer, it could be interesting to watch.

Now I am probably out of line in declaring this a flame war when Joel has yet to provide a direct response to DHH. But DHH is doing his best to shake the trees. See Exhibit A, Two posts and two updates to the second post all in the course of one day.

DHH missed the point of Joel’s post, which was to say that for enterprise applications (read: internal) there are only a limited slate of options (.NET, Java, PHP and 1/2 Python). I think he’s right. And don’t get me wrong… I really like Rails. I love the flexibility; I love the simplicity. I love the “fight the power” attitude that comes packaged with the bits. I have used it a bit on the side and will continue to do so when free time lands in my lap. I’ve even considered repurposing this blog in Rails to add some AJAX-y goodness.

But Joel’s point goes beyond the classic “My programming language is cooler than yours” mentality that populates playgrounds and UNIX circles. It’s not about cool or fun or exciting. It’s about what the enterprise can tolerate and is ready for. When we make architectural decisions at Compassion, we always consider context. Context is king. It dictates what you can afford to do with what you’ve been given. Context also brings in factors like how risk tolerant your customers are and what your Machine Service Bureau (MSB) or support group is willing to maintain.

37Signals is changing the world with their software, and that’s not an understatement. Do I want to use Rails in house at Compassion tomorrow? Of course, I’d love to give it a spin on something internal. Is that a wise decision based on my current context? Not for another year or two, which is exactly what Joel meant. When the Enterprise is the customer, that’s a reality.

All that being said, Joel is missing something here as well. Rails may not be in Joel’s short list now, but I’d be willing to bet it will be before Python makes the skip to a full option. Why? Because Rails in the poster child for agility and getting things done with software. It doesn’t matter that Python has some of those flavors. Ruby on Rails is a term executives are hearing. Rails is also the poster child for AJAX and when AJAX crosses into the enterprise, so will Rails.

In addition to that, the ubiquity of SOA in the enterprise may make all of this moot eventually anyway. Think about it: If my enterprise has a fully-loaded SOA with all the ESB bells and whistles, why couldn’t development team A create a rails application that used services provided by Infrastructure team B? As long as team A’s app can create and consume the right messages (and don’t even assume SOAP… a good ESB can translate REST to SOAP and back again) who cares what stack team A uses (assuming team A will be dogfooding said app)?

In my opinion, all of this is just smoke and wasted bits when we’re in the middle of a technology shift that is enabling these things to play together. So if personal preference becomes the rule of the day (which Microsoft certainly supports by creating languages in .NET that all compile to the same MSIL code) when will these silly schoolyard squabbles stop?

Ruby on Rails, SOA, Joel on Software, Loud Thinking, DHH, .NET

Since I last crafted a legitimate post to this blog, I have enjoyed several months of changes, excitement, bombardment and general much ado about everything. Here are a few highlights:

1) Finished my first Quarter of LIS in one piece.

2) Spent a week in the Dominican Republic leading a Men’s Conference with 3 other men.

3) Was promoted to a new role at Compassion as the Enterprise Applications Architect. I am currently ramping down on day-to-day development work and ramping up (quickly!) into that job. It’s been a lot of fun so far, except the part where I tried to work on all tasks old and new for about two months.

4) Spent 3 days (starting the day after I got back into the country) in San Diego at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit. That was a fun way to get started on the new job, esp. as I got to attend with my new boss.

5) Decided not to take class during the summer Quarter (see #3), but I am getting ready to start the Fall Quarter on September 12. I’ll be taking two courses:

• The Corporate Information Environment
• Legal Issues in Knowledge Management

I am looking forward to those. Not so much the cost of the textbooks, but I am looking forward to the classes themselves.

6) Compassion is at the end of a building expansion and parts of the IT department have been cube and office-less this week. One good friend also managed to find a way to move into a new house this week, I think he’s been sleeping at Panera Bread. As a side note, it’s too bad that good ideas always come to me too late because it would have been cool to have everyone that has been misplaced to take pictures of where they were working this week. I alone have worked from:

• My boss’s office - He’s on vacation this week.
• The World Prayer Center at New Life Church (Colorado Springs)
• The Lobby of New Life Church
• Panera Bread
• My house (This can be further sub-categorized into: the dining room table, the couch, a recliner and on the deck… I am a restless creature)

And that about catches you up to date (assuming you’re still reading). The good news about the move this week is that it has given me a chance to catch up on some much needed research, reading, brainstorming and planning for the new job (with a little coding thrown in).

Some more in relation to my new job: Obviously, this blog was created to be a place where I threw half-baked opinions about UX design against the wall. That was fun for a while, but then my ADD took me to some content about developer stuff related to all the goodies from last years’ DevConnections conference. That was also fun for a while.

All that being said, I think that this blog has never really had the unique personality that it needed to. What’s cool is that my new job has created some interesting synergies between that developer in me (still there Ken) and the guy that thinks that UX matters. Case(s) in point:

1) When I attended the Gartner EA Summit, I heard a great talk by Harry Pierson called Beyond SOA: Understanding the User’s Role in Architecture. Hey, that sounds like something I would enjoy… That was the first sign that I may not have strayed to far after all.
2) I found out after I got back and I was poking around that Simon Guest had given a talk at TechEd entitled Putting the User Back into SOA that I managed to grab the slides for. The second sign… (BTW, that link does not link to the slides themselves. I can’t seem to find them anymore, nor do I remember how I got them. For the next best thing, you can head over to this link where Simon links to an ARCast episode he did with Ron Jacobs on the same topic.)
3) A couple of weeks ago, Simon posted once again about UX. This time, he was announcing a Forum discussion he will be hosting in California on “…the intersection of Architecture and User Experience.” The third and final sign…

This was an exciting set of circumstances for me because I felt in my gut that those old passions were still important and had a place in my new role. This was just some great confirmation. The SOA aspect of this was especially interesting as some aspects of an Enterprise SOA have been rolled out at Compassion and we will continue to look for ways to use it to craft a larger Integration and BPM Platform. For more info on Compassion’s SOA Implementation, Dan Fox, our resident Solutions Architect, Microsoft MVP and all-around genius has been posting about it at length. Check it out here.

So what does all this mean then? It means that I will continue to blog (or start depending on your definition of ‘continue.’) about UX, but from a slightly different perspective. I will continue to talk about UI design and UX for the web, but I will also begin to incorporate some SOA, SaaS, BPM, Architecture and even Knowledge Management ’stuff.’ If you actually read this far, my hope is that you would either a) stick around and continue reading what I write; or b) start today. I’m no expert on any of these subjects, but I love to read, write and discourse on nearly everything.

So here’s to a new phase in the journey. Stick around… let’s hope I find reason to turn my entry in your FeedBurner client bold a bit more often.

UX, BPM, SOA, SaaS, Architecture, Gartner, LIS

Last week, I posted a link to an eBook by Seth Godin called “Knock Knock: Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works” and mirrored the download here. This week, seth has posted his follow up, “Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web.” I’ve mirrored the download here again, so enjoy. Now I must go and drink it all in…

Seth Godin

Seth Godin introduced me to blogging 3 years ago. Three failed attempts at finding something of value to write about later, here I am.

If you’ve never experienced the great mind of Seth Godin, here is your chance. He’s offering a copy of his ebook “Knock Knock: Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works” free to all. I’ve mirrored the download on this site, so grab it and read up. To read Seth’s original post, view his mostly-brilliant musings and track to the other great sites that have linked to him, click here.

Seth Godin

Hold on to your butts everyone! B.L. Ochman seems pretty confident that technorati.com is about to be cherry-picked. Anyone want to venture a guess who it is? Starts with a “G”… ends with an “oogle.”

Let the consolidation begin. Who thinks that MSN or Yahoo! buys IceRocket next?

Technorati, Google, MSN, Yahoo!, IceRocket