Enterprise Architecture - benefits realisation

I went to a course “Applied Teaching” last Friday and Saturday (27 and 28 October 2006) taught by Bjarne Herskin. The course was practical-oriented, and the main issue was to make us (university teachers) focus more on the students understanding of the subject matter than just of the subject itself in our teaching. We all got Bjarne Herskin’s book “Undervisningsteknik for universitetslærere” (Teaching techniques for university teachers”) in which all his interesting ideas, techniques and tools are described as to how university teachers can raise the students learning – the book is in Danish...

All in all, the course was applicable and inspiring.

Posted by Vibeke Trolle Hansen at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Friday - 20 October 06 - my review of the book "Medspil & Modspil - når virksomheder og konsulenter arbejder sammen" by Camilla Huus was published in the newspaper Computerworld's CIO magazine No. 6 - 2006 under the headline "Mere modspil, tak" - it's all in Danish... (The book describes - or the intention is to describe - what it takes to create a successful project that involves external consultants).

Posted by Vibeke Trolle Hansen at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday and Tuesday this week (16 and 17 October 06), I went on a two day Industrial PhD course offered by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Denmark. The course was module 1 of 3, and the focus of this module was mainly on communicating science and networking.

Communicating science dealt with how to write (or talk) about our research projects to newspapers or just the general public - this is actually rather hard. They wanted us to describe the benefits of our projects for the non-scientists, also to help us when communicating within our company. The skills of the consultants teaching us the communication part could definitely be discussed. However, I believe that they had some very good points which are definitely of use to me when trying to describe my project in just a few words:

• Focus on the value of my PhD project (in business terms)
• Prepare an "elevator speech" explaining my project (and the value of it)

The networking part discussed the value of making ourselves understandable (by use of the above points) and accessible. This would give us a network to draw on when we e.i. encounter theoretical and/or empirical challenges or when just being generally suck. In my opinion, the best networking that took place on the course was during our breaks and meals when chatting with all the other industrial PhD students doing research in very different areas - from ice creams over cancer to strategy. The reason is that even though our research areas might be totally different, we all face some of the same challenges.

We also had a session on project management, and we were presented to a model that categorized our projects based on whether our goal and how to get there (solution) were clearly defined. I believe that neither my goal nor my solution are clearly defined which label my PhD project as "ePM" (Extreme Project Management) and the recommendation is : "Make an educated guess and get started" using an iterative approach - and this is also what I am trying to do... I believe. However, it can be a bit frustrating at times so if anyone has some recommendations on this part, please let me know :-)

All together, it was an inspiring course with some useful recommendations - even though some of the teachers definitely need to rethink who the audience is at such a course - and I look forward to module 2 in February not least to get the opportunity to meet my fellow Industrial PhD students again.

Posted by Vibeke Trolle Hansen at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just started my Industrial PhD in august 2006. Its a cooperation between Copenhagen Business School, the Informatics Department, ATP, a public/private Danish pension and insurance organisation and me as the PhD student. My topic is Enterprise Architecture and more specifically how it is possible (if it is possible?) to establish the value of EA? - more on that later...

Posted by Vibeke Trolle Hansen at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday 27 March, I had my final exam – defending my master thesis. It went very well - I got an A (11) :-) My family and dear friend Charlotte, with whom I have written many projects at ITU, were there and drank champagne with me – after the exam… and some of us had lunch at a very cosy restaurant at Frederiksberg. It was a very nice day.

I am now working as an IT architect at ATP in their Method & Solutions department. We (ATP, my supervisor John Gotze and I) are aiming at an “Erhvervs PhD” (Industrial PhD) within the EA field focusing on governance and measurement. Unfortunately, however, their seems to be some issues around the funding due to ATP’s status as a public or private organisation (if they are viewed as a pure public organisation – which they are not! – we might not get any funding from the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation). I will, however, get back to this when I know more.

If you are interested in reading my thesis, here is a link: Enterprise Architecture - how to establish and sustain a successful EA (3MB PDF).

Enjoy the reading ;-)

Posted by Vibeke Trolle Hansen at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dr. John Gøtze and PhD student, Kristian Hjort-Madsen have established a local chapter of the Association of Enterprise Architects (a|EA) in Denmark, and yesterday, Thursday 2 March, I went to the inaugural meeting. The attendance was pretty impressive, and both the public and private sector were presented as well as students (including myself). Besides the formalities, there were some interesting presentations and following discussions. I found it interesting to listen to the various viewpoints, and there is no doubt that there exists an immense number of ideas and opinions of what exactly EA is, how useful it is, and how it is best introduced and implemented in an organisation. Thus, I look forward to the next a|EA meeting on which I am sure more issues will be discussed, and I can highly recommend all that take an interest in the EA discipline to join the a|EA.

Posted by Vibeke Trolle Hansen at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)