There is an inherent conflict in the way IT and the Business – lets define Business as anyone who is not IT – stakeholders measure the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the key performance indicators of the enterprise namely: market share, profit margins and value in the pipeline. The IT Organization feels … Read more →

When it comes to training, there are hundreds of training providers that offer TOGAF® 9 readiness training for certification. In fact, TOGAF® certification training is a multi-million dollar industry and for many, it is their greatest source of income. If you are an individual, or a group in an organization looking for TOGAF® certification, you … Read more →

Brief Summary The Safe Care Environment in our hospitals have two opposing and complementary tenets – a standardized and an integrated care process that are staffed by a motivated and agile workforce. The Total Quality programs in engineering, manufacturing and other industries can help balance these two forces by fully understanding the constraints of their … Read more →

Interesting Times In a speech in Cape Town in June 1966, Robert Kennedy said “ There is a Chinese curse which says ‘May he live in interesting times.’ Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of … Read more →

Background One of the often sited reasons why IT projects fail is not having well defined and understandable requirements. In our decades of involvement with the IT industry; project teams, IT staff and business stakeholders have remained at odds over what constitutes “requirements”. It appears that IT Project teams don’t know what to ask and … Read more →

To enable business value through information capabilities, IT professionals are being asked not only to deliver IT systems but to also help define, develop and exploit underlying enterprise capabilities. Are you ready for this challenge? If not, we can help. The ability to define, develop and exploit enterprise capabilities are new skills for IT professionals; … Read more →

From our experience, we have seen organizations require their lines of businesses (LOBs) to define a service catalogue to let other LOBs know of the services. The LOB can be internal to the organization or be outsourced. To be clear, a capability is an ability that an organization possesses – what the organization does – … Read more →

A previous blog discussed skills that are needed by IT and others in the organization and found that it is both IT and the business that need to learn the customer speak and work towards a single goal. This alignment is often taken casually but this blog will demonstrate the importance of this statement in … Read more →

I have been involved with the Enterprise Architecture (EA) industry for the past 12 years. If the number of open positions for Enterprise Architects is any indication, there are a great many vacancies for EA opportunities that are going unfulfilled. Every time we discuss how to close this supply and demand gap for architects, the … Read more →

People outside of the IT organization often protest that they wish their IT folks were more business savvy. Rarely does this dialogue provide any insight into the short coming of their IT staff and how their skills gap can be overcome. This week, we (the QRS EA Team) decided to explore this subject. Hope this … Read more →