Blog Archives

Tools and metatools

Posted on 25 January 2015 by Tom G — No Comments ↓

Meta-this-that-and-the-other – metamodels, metaframeworks, metamethodology, metatheory, even metatools? What is all this stuff about ‘meta-‘? And what is ‘meta-’, anyway? One answer is that it’s about a kind of recursion that we often need in our work, in which something is applied to…

Tagged with: chaos, complexity, effectiveness, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Knowledge, meta-methodology, metaframework, metamodel, metatools, SCAN, toolsets
Posted in Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Knowledge

More on theory and metatheory in EA

Posted on 21 January 2015 by Tom G — 3 Comments ↓

“Yes, we need theory in enterprise-architecture”, people will often say to me, “but which theory should it be? Should it be quantitative, everything defined in terms of metrics? Or should it be qualitative, and forget about metrics entirely? Which one…

Tagged with: chaos, complexity, decision-making, Enterprise architecture, metatheory, paradigm, sense-making, theory
Posted in Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture

Theory and metatheory in enterprise-architecture

Posted on 19 January 2015 by Tom G — 21 Comments ↓

What’s the role of theory in enterprise-architecture? Could there be such as thing as ‘the theory of enterprise-architecture’? Can we use that theory, for example, to separate useful EA models from useless ones? It seems that Nick Malik thinks so, as per…

Tagged with: chaos, complexity, decision-making, Enterprise architecture, metatheory, paradigm, sense-making, theory
Posted in Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture

On (not) changing the world

Posted on 13 January 2015 by Tom G — 3 Comments ↓

Back on the ‘no more arguments‘ theme, there were a couple of responses I received that, although nominally private, were so apposite and to-the-point that I really do need to reprise them here. (Because the messages were private, I’ll paraphrase them…

Tagged with: anarchist, change, chaos, complexity, effectiveness, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Knowledge, meta-methodology, RBPEA, Society
Posted in Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Power and responsibility, Society, The Outsider

Reframing the way I work

Posted on 1 January 2015 by Tom G — 8 Comments ↓

It’s time to make an end to the arguments that have plagued my professional-life and more for at least the past decade. And the simplest way to do that – to make that ending possible – is to reframe what…

Tagged with: anarchist, chaos, complexity, effectiveness, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Knowledge, meta-methodology, metaframework, metamodel
Posted in Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Knowledge

An end to the arguments

Posted on 31 December 2014 by Tom G — 4 Comments ↓

It’s sometimes said that the real collective-noun for architects is an argument – ‘an argument of architects’. We see that often enough on LinkedIn, to be sure… Yet we’ve also seen it way too often on these pages here, or in…

RBPEA: Wrapping up on gender

Posted on 26 November 2014 by Tom G — No Comments ↓

In what ways can we use explorations at the RBPEA (Really-Big-Picture Enterprise-Architecture) scope and scale to create insights for practical use in everyday-level enterprise-architectures? For example – in the specific case of this blog-series – what can we learn from…

Tagged with: abuse, anarchist, anticlient, Business, chaos, complexity, decision-making, effectiveness, enterprise, Enterprise architecture, Futures, gender, methodology, mythquake, paradigm, power, RBPEA, responsibility, sense-making, Society, values, worldview
Posted in Business, Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Power and responsibility, Society

RBPEA: An anticlient’s tale

Posted on 24 November 2014 by Tom G — No Comments ↓

How does someone become an anticlient – a person who’s committed to the same aims of the same shared-enterprise, but vehemently disagrees with how you or your organisation are acting within it? And, since anticlient-actions can actually kill the entire…

RBPEA: On abuse and gender

Posted on 18 November 2014 by Tom G — No Comments ↓

What is abuse, or violence? How do we prevent it, or at least reduce it? And to what extent, and in what ways, is gender a contributing factor in any of this? In line with the theme of this blog-series, in…

Tagged with: abuse, anarchist, Business, chaos, complexity, decision-making, effectiveness, enterprise, Enterprise architecture, Futures, gender, methodology, mythquake, paradigm, power, RBPEA, responsibility, sense-making, Society, values, worldview
Posted in Business, Complexity / Structure, Enterprise architecture, Futures, Power and responsibility, Society

RBPEA: a quick note on inequalities

Posted on 14 November 2014 by Tom G — No Comments ↓

This is a quick practical follow-on to the previous post ‘RBPEA: On equality and gender‘. In the ‘Practical applications’ section at the end, where we shift down from the big-picture and refocus on everyday enterprise-architecture, I asserted that “inequalities are…