The Inspired Approach to Business Architecture

We believe:

That business architecture is bigger than popular frameworks and methods admit

That certification requires real world experience not just a body of knowledge

That the important stuff that shapes strategy is “out there” not “in here”

That innovative thinking, ethical behaviour and emerging technology can be employed to deliver desirable futures while minimising risk and avoiding negative consequences

That great strategy and designs are emergent

That good meta models provide the best basis for integration of different aspects of enterprise architecture work and with adjacent disciplines (programme management, risk, strategy, solution delivery)

I have just revised our 2012! paper on “An Inspired Approach to Business Architecture”.

Read it here.

Our Business Architect Competency Survey is now live!

Do you have all the skills/knowledge and experience required of a competent Business Architect?

Find out in our Business Architect Competency Survey, now live!

It will highlight where you shine and where you may have work to do.

Take the survey.

The survey is based on our perspective that business architects need a broad mix of skills including business understanding, contextual awareness, strategic thinking, modelling skills, persuasion skills, architecture techniques, awareness of economic, social, technology trends, knowledge of reference models, quality concepts and maturity evaluation, and appreciation of related disciplines (e.g. Risk, Programme Management, Portfolio Management etc.).

Industry knowledge, experience and continuous learning also feature.

Thanks to all who expressed interest and especially those who tested the draft version and provided valuable feedback.

Assisting Individuals in Difficult Times - TOGAF® Certification for Less

Are you battling to get a job or the position you want during these difficult times?

TOGAF® certification is proven to improve job prospects and remuneration received in enterprise architecture roles.

To assist you during the current challenging times, we are offering a 33% discount to individuals on our Practical TOGAF® course 2 - 6 August, subject to these conditions:

• Individuals must be paying for their own tuition (i.e. not your current employer)

• Course fees must be paid in full by Friday before course attendance

• Places are still available (we limit numbers to ensure personal attention)

Normal price is R27000 plus VAT. With the discount, the price is R18 090 plus VAT in SA and developing economies. Elsewhere, reduced from US$2500 to US$1675.

Our course is the best, most practical available and is fully accredited.

See the course page for all the details.

You will receive full online live tuition (5 days), extensive supporting materials (including 400p lecture notes, TOGAF(R) Reference, Study Guides, Examination Vouchers (Part 1 and 2, valid for a year) and other materials).

To take advantage of this offer, please contact angela@inspired.org.

Full Masterclass Launches February 2021

World’s first digital art museum, Tokyo

Following our successful pilot during October 2020, we can now confirm the launch of the full Masterclass programme. This is scheduled for February-June 2021 and runs over 15 weeks. It aims to be the premier Business Architecture training offering available worldwide. It will be limited to a maximum of 24 delegates to ensure an engaging and transformative experience. 

The programme leverages Inspired’s 30 year track record in the enterprise architecture, business and IT strategy, and business architecture disciplines. It offers thought leadership in the integration of business strategy, business architecture, downstream IT architecture domains (process, applications, information, technology), programme management, risk and change management. 

The Most Comprehensive Content

To impart the broadest skill set and competence.

Approaches such as TOGAF™ (The Open Group), Zachman, BizBoK (Business Architecture Guild), Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur), Enterprise Engineering (Dietz et al), Archimate™ (Open Group) and others all address some aspects of Business Architecture. Several have grown from the IT discipline to incorporate techniques to understand the business enough to inform IT. However, they do not provide guidance sufficient to understand the context in which business is taking place and to design a Desirable Future for the business. 

With all the change drivers in today’s world, including technology change, societal change, legislative change, political uncertainty, economic issues, climate change and a host of others (e.g pandemics), understanding external change and how to rapidly and surely transform the organisation to a desirable future is a vital need. You need an approach that recognises the challenges, understands and manages the many dimensions and complexity, and guides sound decisions that are clearly transferred into delivery. 

Includes the Following Topics

Note: We are likely to still refine this based upon pilot feedback and even your input. There is time to help us shape this into the best programme worldwide. Send us your thoughts.

• Analysing a business using decomposition/abstraction from a variety of perspectives

• Maturity/readiness models, heat maps, gap analysis

• Ontologies, Taxonomies, Meta Models, Industry Reference Models

• Context Analysis

• Interaction with the Environment and Stakeholders

• Measurement, Metrics and Business Health

• Understanding and Delivering Value

• Working Smarter not Harder• Communication, Listening, Convincing

• Data, Knowledge and Power

• Organisation Structure, Design, Emergence

• Conceiving Desirable Futures

• Understanding and Achieving Quality

• Why? Understanding Motivation. Setting Goals and tracking Achievement

• Innovation and Disruption

• Delivering Delight

• Managing Risk

• Choosing Battles, Scoping, Prioritising

The Most Engaging Delivery

The instruction is live. Lectures are delivered TED style to ensure high engagement and easy retention. Case study based assignments provide hands on learning. Rich feedback resolves any issues. Recorded material facilitates review. 

The Best Value

The programme is priced competitively, with deep discounts if you are in an emerging economy. 

Be One of the First

You have the opportunity to be in the initial group on this exciting journey.  Act quickly, though: quite a few places have already been booked by those continuing from the pilot!

Click here for course details and to register interest.

Business Architecture Masterclass Pilot is Live!

We have been engaged on our own online learning journey, expanding our knowledge of how to conceive, design, build, run and improve online training. We have adapted some of our current offerings to meet online demand in the short term. This resulted in running a successful remote delivery, but still lecture led Practical TOGAF certification course in late July. 

In parallel, we have been redesigning our forthcoming Business Architecture Masterclass for remote delivery. We have been testing ideas with alumni, experts and the market, with some very positive results. 

The first three modules of this will run in October, as a pilot, with one high value session per week. Feedback and interaction will be used to help optimise the rest of the programme, which will add a further 9-12 modules, building into an advanced body of knowledge and leading to (optional) certification. 

If you are keen to participate or find out more, please click here to read more.

We would love to have you with us on this exciting new endeavour!

Business Architecture Masterclass Morphs!

Photo credit: architizer.com

Under normal circumstances the Master Class would have had its first run this month. As we all know, these are not normal circumstances. We are entering the eighth week of a hard lockdown, with no certainty of when things will lighten up. See my recent blog here about the fact that when the pandemic eases, things will not really return to normal. We need to be ready for a new normal. Inside Inspired, we have been contemplating the situation going forward and concluded that face to face live intensive training in physical venues is likely to be problematic for some time, and may never fully recover to previous levels.

Accordingly, we are taking some of our own medicine and preparing to Leap Forward to a new normal. The Business Architecture Master Class is morphing to a remote delivery model which will run on a modular basis. This has some challenges, in that we have to redesign quite a lot of the assignments, delivery and group work to fit the new format. We want it to be at least as good an experience as our previous live courses - quite a high bar. The new format will have some advantages, including:

• Availability to geographically dispersed students

• Easier to fit into packed work schedules than taking a full week out

• No need to / expense of travel and accommodation

• Opportunity to have a more diverse student cohort

• Lower pricing, as we have savings on physical materials, venue and travel

• Opportunities to apply learning in own organisation

• Gaining skills in remote group working

The exact structure is still being finalised, but is likely to include:

• A programme over 15 weeks

• Delivered as half day (3 hour) modules that will run each week. A module will be presented at two different times. This is to accommodate different time zones and allow students two scheduling opportunities in a week

• High quality notes and references will be provided in .pdf and eBook form

• Presentations will be recorded and will remain available to students and alumni for a year

• Group and individual assignments will be

  • Reviewed as live presentations during sessions and/or

  • Reviewed by instructor/coach following electronic submission

There is time for you to provide feedback and suggestions before we commence. Please let us know what you think. We have some ideas for rewarding top performing students too, even during the programme.

Note too, that we will be including post COVID Leap Forward thinking and the unique readiness assessment in the programme. This is a powerful way to analyse your organisation, its industry and positioning and its fit to a New Normal world. Having identified the areas requiring change, the techniques would help you design a desirable future where your organisation can make the necessary changes / pivot to thrive in challenging new circumstances.

At this stage we are anticipating an August launch.

We look forward to the journey with you.

To register your interest and provide feedback, click here.

Please feel free to share this post with colleagues and others who may be interested.

Let's Shape Desirable Futures

Graham McLeod

Alan Kay famously said: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. As a key mind behind global phenomena including the Internet, Object Oriented Programming, Graphical User Interfaces and the use of computers in education, he should know. His PhD thesis in 1968, the “Dynabook”, is partially realised today as the iPad. But vision is not enough, it has to be followed by invention. In business terms that translates to strategy, architecture, innovation and design. 

Join us in our Business Architecture Master Class, coming this May. We have condensed decades of research, experience, practice and techniques, including (b)leading edge techniques addressing topics such as business/IT/Digital Technology alignment, Blue Ocean strategy, exponential technologies, AI/deep learning, Internet of Things, blockchain and digital business models with proven thinking and modelling tools such as systems thinking, design thinking, decomposition, abstraction, inferencing and lateral thinking. 

Integrate dimensions of value delivery, product, channels, process, service, capability, function, applications, information and technology with business models and organisation structure.

The Master Class uses innovative delivery including “TED-like” talks, video, focussed facilitation sessions and student challenges to fully engage participants and accelerate learning. Being a Master Class, we will be challenging you to work at a higher level using models, meta models, ontologies and taxonomies and adapting these to meet the unique needs of your organisations and current challenges. We will show how you can stay agile but integrated and sustainable, while reusing existing assets, driving change programmes and managing risk. 

I will also be sharing fruits from my research into design of visual languages and insights on how to achieve effective communication and persuasion to ensure the invention efforts pay off in the real world. 

Be one of the first to be certified and take away valuable models, skills and techniques from a unique experience. Please register your interest here. Participation limited to 25 delegates.

Read the announcement.

The Inspired Holistic Architecture Language©

Inspired pioneered the use of meta model driven EA Frameworks from the early 1990’s, providing one of the earliest integrated EA frameworks across business, applications, information and technology. The meta model driven approach has many advantages, including:

• Clear definition of concepts so they are consistently used across definitions, documents, models and stakeholder communities

• Facilitates integration of information from different domains and gathered by different analysts

• Eases scoping of EA Assignments by allowing rapid identification of data required to answer critical questions

• Integrates models from different perspectives to provide rigour, identify gaps and provide more insights without more effort

• Captures much higher semantic content (meaning) than unstructured document based approaches

Over the years we have refined and extended this framework, incorporating ideas required by many (>70) client assignments/implementations as well as emerging thinking from other frameworks and languages, including IAF, TOGAF, FEAF, Zachman, Archimate, PEAF and others. Other extensions added Application Portfolio Management (APM), Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and Programme Management into the mix. This was supported by academic work in integrated frameworks, collaborative modelling and meta modelling.

Associated tooling, in the form of EVA, provided support for a central repository accessible to all stakeholders via the web and desktop modelling component. EVA grew in capabilities too, to support planning via Canvasses (ala Osterwalder ), customised portals (e.g. for APM) and sophisticated visualisations to gain new insights. 

Graham McLeod has been conducting research (including towards a PhD ) on integration of methods, meta models and visual languages for a number of years. With colleagues, especially Charles Edwards, he now introduces a new, integrated, comprehensive and holistic meta model supporting strategy, enterprise architecture (business, process, security, information, technology domains) as well as the aspect of organisational change (motivations, programmes, projects etc. ). The meta model is mapped to a consistent visual language that is suitable for use with all stakeholders. 

The new framework, meta models and visual language are already finding its first application in client projects and are proving very capable and effort effective. 

If you would like to know more, please contact us using this form.

IAF = Integrated Architecture Framework from Cap Gemini

TOGAF™ = The Open Group Architecture Framework from the Open Group

FEAF = Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework from the US Government

Zachman = Zachman Frameworks from John Zachman and the Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement

Archimate™ = Archimate EA Modeling Language from the Open Group

PEAF = Pragmatic EA Framework from Kevin Lee Smith

EVA = Enterprise Value Architect from Inspired

Introducing the Business Architecture Master Class

Are you involved in shaping strategy?

Inspired pioneered business architecture (in the form of integrated business strategy and strategic IT planning) as far back as 1989. We continued to evolve methods, techniques, frameworks and meta models to effectively deliver business value. Tools followed to support the techniques and collaboration while generating new insights through inference and visualisation. We introduced our Techniques and Deliverables of Business Architecture training in 2011. This has run over 40 times to wide acclaim, while evolving over the years to incorporate cloud, digital, user experience, exponential organisations, design thinking, digital currency, internet of things and many other innovations. 

In 2019, we revised our frameworks and meta model resulting in the new Inspired Holistic Architecture Language©. Now, in 2020, we are launching our Business Architecture Master Class. This condenses key elements of the Techniques and Deliverables course in its latest incarnation and goes further to challenge delegates with ground breaking research and practice as it is applied by the most innovative and successful organisations. It covers “Meta” architecture skills such as tailoring frameworks, using meta models and leveraging abstraction and reference models. 

The master class will be led by our Founder/Chief Architect, Graham McLeod, with 18 years of academic work and 30 years of application across more than 60 organisations behind it. Graham has engaged in ground breaking research in enterprise modelling and design of supporting visual languages and tools over the last six years. 

If you want to shape Desirable Futures, join today’s CIOs, Chief Strategy Officers, hands on CEOs and Senior Business Architects and be there. Coming in late May. Participation limited to a maximum of 25 delegates. To register your interest click here.