27 Friday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture, Enterprise Architecture
Between 2004 and 2009 Microsoft published The Architecture Journal. A few years old now, there are some useful articles in the Journals that still apply today.
You can download the Journals or view the individual Articles in the Archive.
26 Thursday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture, Enterprise Architecture
There are many good examples of Enterprise Architecture documentation available as reference on the Internet. All following different methodologies, but ultimately illustrating how an Enterprise Architecture documentation set can assist in driving strategy and the business forward.
A bit dated now (2004), but a good example of such a document set is the 5 volumes from NASA.
NASA Enterprise Architecture Vol 1 – NASA Enterprise Architecture
NASA Enterprise Architecture Vol 2 – Office Automation, IT Infrastructure, and Telecommunications
NASA Enterprise Architecture Vol 3 – Program Unique IT and Multi-Program / Project IT Investment Category
NASA Enterprise Architecture Vol 4 – Strategies and Structure
NASA Enterprise Architecture Vol 5 NASA To-Be Architecture, Approach to Design and Implementation
The documents are based on the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework
25 Wednesday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture, Enterprise Architecture
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A while ago I created a book on Wikipedia on Enterprise Architecture (Back in August 2009) using Wikipedia Books. This is a function to pull together articles from Wikipedia together in a book format, then download as a PDF or even send to get printed.
I haven’t got far with the printing aspect on this book, although I did pull together some articles on a different subject and sent that to be printed. I was happy with the bound book that came back from the service and it was a reasonable cost.
Thought I would go back and revisit the book and see where it is up to today.
Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Enterprise_Architecture
I have created this as an open book so it can be added to should anyone wish to assist in collating relevant articles.
The current index is made up of following articles:
24 Tuesday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Governance, Productivity, Tools
Tags
An Architecture Thought Tool I use when looking to identify any Risks in a projects or assignment is to use the STORMCLOUD method.
This involves identifying the risks by going through the following areas:
Once identified its then a case of mitigating the risks that can be and calling out those that cannot.
Using this method is just one of many, but helps focus on the important areas to consider.
23 Monday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture, Data Science
Tags
An interesting piece of research on Data Scientist Job Titles has been carried out from data on LinkedIn of over 10,000 professionals.
The data splits out into 11 categories listing 700+ Job Titles:
The raw data is available to play with. I have been looking at the Architecture job titles that fall into the “Data Plumbing” category to initially have a view of Architecture Roles within Data Science and what that means. I will continue this research and blog later about it.
As a bit of fun if you want a generated Job Title, one app to try is this one – Generate a Job Title for you comes up with “Your Silicon Valley job title is……..”
My favourite Generation is the “Software Warlock”
A close second is “Grand Poobah of Digital Innovation”
17 Tuesday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture
Tags
Following another set of great and useful Techdays 2015 online days hosted by Microsoft, the replay is now available for those who could not attend.
The three days covered:
05 Thursday Feb 2015
Posted in Architecture, Cloud, Enterprise Architecture
Having worked as an Architect for many years its always good to look at different methodologies and practices as they come up and to refresh your thinking on today’s Architecture practices.
One of the recent additions to the Microsoft Virtual Academy is the “Architecture in Practice” course which brings Microsoft’s latest views on Architecture using their products as a base for some of the demonstrations and topics. Whilst this centers around Microsoft products and standard practices, (to a seasoned architect may not teach them anything new in Architecture practices), taking a course such as this certainly refreshes that thinking in today’s challenging market place of cloud, visualisation and mobile.
One of the underlying foundations that makes a great architect is their willingness to refreshing and renew skills and thinking when ever the opportunity arises.
The diagram below shows the 7 areas that are covered in this course:
Further breakdown of the course with topic areas:
Source of pictures and link to the training: Architecture in Practice.
27 Tuesday Jan 2015
Posted in Cloud, DevOps/OpsDev, Programming
Tags
Architecture, Cloud, Coding, CPD, Development, DevOps, learning, OpsDev, Programming
I am looking forward to this years TechDays Online 2015 which is being run between the 3rd and 5th February 2015. If you cant make the sessions then they normally appear on Microsoft Virtual Academy a few weeks later.
This is being done over 3 days with a packed agenda that you can dip in and out of as needed.
Day One Theme: Client, Devices and Mobility :
09:30-09:40 Overview of the Day
09:40-10:15 Delighting your business with EMS
10:30-11:05 Devices, Devices Everywhere
11:20-11:55 Windows 10 Client Innovations
12:10-12:45 KEYNOTE: What IT Pros and Devs Need to Know About the New Microsoft
13:30-14:05 Building IoT solutions today
14:20-14:55 Microsoft Azure Remote App
15:10-15:45 Microsoft Azure RMS
16:00-16:35 Azure Active Directory: Much more than a user store
16:50-17:25 Microsoft Intune/SCCM
17:25-17:30 Wrap up of day 1 – Part 1
18:30-19:05 Migration of your mailboxes to Office 365
19:15-19:50 Keeping in touch with the online world
20:00-20:35 Building online collaboration inside Office 365
20:35-20:45 Final thoughts for the day
Day Two Theme: Server and Cloud:
09:30-09:40 Overview of the Day
09:40-10:15 What’s new Windows Server /Hyper –V – a technical preview
10:30-11:05 How to find out what’s happening in your datacentre with Azure Insights
11:20-11:55 Host your own cloud with the Windows Azure Pack
12:10-12:45 Taking scripting to the next level with Service Management / Azure Automation
13:30-14:05 A new home for your old applications ↓
14:20-14:55 20% + of Azure runs on Linux – why is this important and how to do it well?
15:10-15:45 DevOps in Microsoft Azure with Chef and Puppet for heterogeneous cloud environments
16:00-16:35 Make Azure your DMZ
16:50-17:25 Microsoft Corporate Keynote
17:25-17:35 Wrap up of Day 2
Day Three Theme: Developer
09:30-09:40 Overview of the Day
09:40-10:25 Creating cross-platform apps with Visual Studio
10:40-11:25 How are you going to deploy that?
11:40-12:25 Microsoft Azure Machine Learning without a PhD
13:00-13:45 Debugging and Performance Tuning Web Apps and Sites
14:00-14:45 What is Roslyn and why should you care?
15:00-15:45 Building cross-platform apps with .NET and ASP.NET
16:00-16:45 Creating cross-platform cloud apps for mobile devices
17:00-17:45 Microsoft Corporate Keynote
17:45-17:55 Wrap-up of Tech.Days Online Day 3
12 Monday Jan 2015
Posted in Development
Tags
Following on from my blog on IT professionals and CPD Hours and the survey I have been running to look at I am going to keep the survey open for another week as there has not been a high response so far. I am hoping for some more responses before starting to analyse the results and publish them to give a bit more depth to the findings.
The survey can be found at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FGWF9JS
Previous Blog can be found at: https://maxhemingway.com/2015/01/06/it-professionals-and-continuing-professional-development-cpd-hours/
06 Tuesday Jan 2015
Posted in Development
Tags
After a recent conversation with someone who works in the Dental Industry on development and learning, I learnt that they have to complete a number of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) hours a year and a minimum number over a 5 year period. Following this I carried out a short investigation into the amount CPD requirements that were recommended across different industries picking on some of most obvious top of the head ones.
Most of these are from professional bodies that people in those industries can join, some are a must join such as medical professions and there is a mandatory requirement to do the CPD or you will be struck off, or no requirement to join and therefore no requirement to complete the number of CPD hours required by that body.
In the world of IT there is no requirement to join a professional body nor to carry out a number of required CPD hours a year.
There is no right answer to the number of hours that you should be performing, however looking at other industries and especially those in the Project Management space which is a role that works closely with Architects – 30-40 hours annually is a good figure to aim for.
I would suggest that the wrong answer though is not doing any hours.
So what type of CPD should someone be doing? Some industries split this into Verifiable and Non-Verifiable. Attending a workshop, webinar, Lunch and Learn would be classed as Verifiable as your attendance can be recorded. Non-Verifiable would be something like read an article on a web page.
The BCS (British Computer Society) have a view around the different types of CPD http://interact.bcs.org/cpd/Types%20of%20CPD.pdf which contains a number of categories and measures for learning. This is based around a core CPD Cycle. Although there is no set number of hours for the BCS to gain accreditation and membership you do need to show learning and development annually.
So why bother with CPD?
This is easy to answer in that if you don’t, others are! Planning an amount of CPD a year will help to keep you fresh and current within your field.
I would be interested in views from others on what is the right level of CPD to achieve annually. As such I have created a survey to ask some questions and collect some answers
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FGWF9JS
I will run the survey for a while then publish the results in this blog when collated.
sources:
http://www.sra.org.uk/faqs/cpd/How-many-hours-of-CPD-do-I-need-to-do-.page
http://www.cim.co.uk/cpd/CPDCharteredMarketer/EarningCPDhours.aspx
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Dentalprofessionals/CPD/Pages/cpdrequirements.aspx
http://www.rics.org/uk/regulation1/compliance1/continuing-professional-development-cpd/
http://www.apm.org.uk/CPD
Max Hemingway 