REAL Talk With Sam Holcman

In this first installment of What is Strategy, we will define what is Strategy.

We suggest eight questions that you ask your potential Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture Consultant/Advisor/Potential Hire, prior to spending hard earned money.

We define Business Architecture, from a Stakeholder perspective and Practitioner perspective, and how Business Capabilities are developed and defined.

The latest published statistics are documenting a digital transformation failure rate of between seventy and ninety five percent.  WOW!  We suggest a “Succeed-Fast” approach that is Business-Goal aligned.  Select areas that are most critical/important to the organization, which will engage the stakeholders directly due to their interest in a specific area.  It does take a bit more “architecture”,...

Ontologies=Architecture Flows and Hierarchies = Implementation.  It is not one or the other – it is both for Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture. If your Enterprise or Business Architecture efforts are not getting the results or recognition you believe should be there, it is highly likely that what are presenting is not architecture and is not human consumable.  It is never too late t...

In the Artificial Intelligence – Internet Age, these four words are rarely discussed, yet they are extremely important when we read or hear something.  How do you determine which one of these you are seeing, when a conclusion is drawn.  Some real thoughtful analysis needs to be done.

Unfortunately, studies show an alarming failure rate in digital transformation efforts. Our analysis indicates two contributing factors to this failure rate – no fully defined Goal for the digital transformation effort and beginning the transformation by documenting the current business state prior to first defining the desired business state and outcome.

Yes, AI data is already a mess.  The excuse phrase we use is AI is “hallucinations”.  Well, another term to use is “mistakes”!  But let us stop looking out the rear view mirror and look how we can harness the AI engine for our competitive advantage.  How – by building out your data foundation.  The right time to do this is when data starts coming in the door.  Or the right time to do this is now! ...

Federal labor statics now confirm an almost four percent month to month decline in host computer costs and server costs, while cloud services are increasing almost two- and one-half percent.  Cloud computing as a default is no longer a strategy.  R.E.A.L. Enterprise Architects have the ability to provide an analysis on a case-by-case basis, as to deployment strategies that balance cost effectively...

The pace of technological innovations seems to be accelerating at a pace unseen before.  Yet studies have indicated that seventy-five percent of respondents to a recent survey have a level of concern as to what they are hearing about these innovations.  This broadcast outlines a balanced reward/risk approach as to analyzing these innovations moving forward.

There are several phases that we suggest organizations need to work though, to get to, what the organization considers is digital transformation.  You sort of have a hint in this first sentence – what is the end state you desire to achieve through this effort.  From that understanding, then look at business changes possibly required – especially process changes.  Then go on to technology.  Yes, th...

Flowing through the Chinese government is a proposal to restrict internet usage on mobile devices for those under 18 years of age.  Those limits range from a 40 minute limit to those eight and under to two hours for those 18 and under.  Additionally, no internet between the hours of 10PM and 6AM.  Food for thought for those of us outside China.  Have a listen to the details, and I look forward to...

I revived a real letter recently – yes, an envelope with a stamp and contents.  I was not sure whether the envelope and some of the enclosed writing was handwritten, or computer generated.  What did intrigue me was one of the notes that was in the content explaining why this organization used regular mail to get my attention.  Have a listen and see what thoughts this generates.

Do you actually know the credentials of your Business Architecture or Enterprise Architecture prior to you parting with your hard-earned money, or your company’s money?  Not just the organization they work for, but who will be providing you with the training and knowledge you need to be successful?  This broadcast outlines just a few simple questions that you should be able to get answers to, in l...

In the field of Business Architecture and Enterprise Architecture, some are trying to popularize the concept of just enough architecture or minimal viable architecture and resulting products.  We suggest that underlying this trend is too much complexity in what is being represented – not level of detail, but its representation.  This broadcast will describe simple and complete as what is desired (...

A United States Senator – Senator Wyden – has asked the FTC, and DOJ to investigate Microsoft for its role in a previous cyber-hack and an email breach.  I applaud this direction, but suggest that “picking” on Microsoft and looking at cybersecurity is, at most, only a start, and I may question that this is a good starting point.  Let us do “root cause analysis”, for these incidents and others.  We...

Large bad data.  Obviously not good and some have recognized this as “model collapse” – the bad data causes more bad data to be generated.  Small bad data – nothing needs to be said here.  Small (vetted, provenance-known) data – perhaps within your enterprise walls – perhaps the way to go, until large, good data that is used for training appears.  When will this happen?  I do not think this is on...

Outputs – something that is produced.  Outcomes – the result of something.  What is your “end state” that you are producing from your Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture efforts?  What are your Stakeholders seeing?  Outputs or Outcomes?  If it is Outputs, perhaps listening to this broadcast will explain the reception you are getting.  Words do have meaning, but so do Outcomes!

There is a growing realization that AI large models are being trained on AI generated content.  You may have to read this sentence again!  In some circles, this is being called AI generated spam.  And more of concern, as we enter the “political season” in the United States, the ease of which political disinformation, with AI generated disinformation will overwhelm legitimate sources.  We suggest t...

We describe the three maturity levels for organizations that write computer software and develop applications.  Maturity Level 1 – Make to Order, Maturity Level 2 – Provide from Stock, Maturity Level 3 – Assemble to Order.  Maturity Level three is the key to Enterprise Agility.

A vendor releases a software update to address a serious flaw in their software.  The treat was serious enough to cause the software vendor to rush out a patch.  The patch itself had a problem.  The response from the vendor?  Back out the patch and await another patch!  I thought this flaw was serious.  It is still there.  We need to get this madness stopped.

Some of the newest software is being developed for electric vehicles charging stations. Guess what?  Hackers are having a field day.  What is the reaction of the government and industry?  Continuing the whack-a-mole approach to after the fact security.  The madness must stop.  Just a bit of root cause analysis shows us the pathway.

You hear numerous phrases like “minimal viable”, “just enough”, and terms like this.  Yet, the implementations tend to default to massive, costly, and lengthy “final solutions”.  Let us think in an opposite manner.  Not what is minimal, but what is needed for a particular purpose.  It begins with Architecture, more specifically Federated Architecture.  This concept is introduced in this podcast, a...

We review some eye-opening statistics on the incredible increases in computer hardware advancements in processing capacity and relate that to the very different productivity and effectiveness of using this capacity and today's software development practices. It is time for a true assessment of what best practices are in software development.

Confirmation Bias is defined as the tendency to attribute more weight than we should to information or solutions that are consistent with our beliefs. The technology industry has seen this in cloud computing, enterprise and business architecture, and numerous other areas. Unfortunately, the ramifications of an unoptimized solution do not show up for some time. We provide some guidance to avoid the...