Enterprise Thinking for Information Technology Professionals

We begin the lecture by exploring the value of enterprise architecture and making a case. The lecture does not market any particular framework or technology. The idea is to share the rationale behind big picture, long term thinking.

We went on to explore the downsides of what some may consider "emergent" architecture and emphasizing the need to think before doing. Architecture is not just documentation, it is planning the implementation. There must be a good enough view of the end state to begin with.

In this lecture, we draw simple lessons from the town planners who built the city of Dubai. The lessons are basic assumptions we could make about any carefully planned city not exact data from the middle eastern city.

Enterprise Architecture is one of the functions that has the greatest capacity to inspire Enterprise Thinking. This lesson discusses the meaning of Enterprise Architecture by disecting Gartner's definition of the concept.

In this video, I share the real-world experience of having to deal with techies who are not very enthusiatic about documenting architecture. When someone does the job of documenting architecture, it is likely it will not be followed. As inconvenient as going through the architecting process is, the effort is worth it in the long term.

We distinguish the expression "architecture" from the related expression "architecture model". Even when an architecture is yet to be explicitly documented, it exists. However, the idea of practicing architecture implies that we become more deliberate about creating models that define what we want to build.

In this seven-and-half minute video, I share a real-world example of a transformation project I was involved in while working for a financial institution. The issues we had to deal with are recounted in the video and used to illustrate the concepts taught in this section - people, process, technology.

In this lecture, we give an overview of a few enterprise functions that are not necessarily technical. This short list of functions is derived from industry experience. They support technical functions to deliver value to the organization in an organized fashion. Techies are encouraged to support such function as inconvenient as it might seem.

In this video, we give more practical insights from a real life scenario on the value of working with enterprise functions as a technology professional.

This lecture focuses on decision making with respect to adopting solutions and rolling out initiatives in a large organization. The process is derives from industry experience and resembles a waterfall approach. However, the learner should be conscious that this course does not address implementation (HOW) but design (WHAT). In many cases, design must be sequenced behind implementation.