It is nearly impossible not coming across an article or a post about digital transformation on any given day. I can at least guarantee you have seen one today.

Considering the profundity of digital, the abundance of content on digital transformation must be expected. I think all industries, governments and even the society are still in the process of comprehending what digital truly means. Everyone who has seen that mm-hmm moment would have definitely developed second thoughts about the opportunities as well as the threads that come with digital. To me, it is somewhat akin to discovering plastics; the scientific…

Every profession requires special skills which make an individual best or mediocre in that field. If you are a superhero, flying without engines, seeing behind the walls or firing laser beams off your eyes would certainly make you a favourite amongst the others.

Having spent close to two decades in technology architecture, I tried imagining the superpowers of a super architect. I focused on the character skills instead of domain, technology, or methodology knowledge and experience.

I believe an architect who has these skills would pull off any complex design problems even they are new in the field or don’t…

Best way to secure funding for your project is to put the word Digital somewhere into the name of it.

Those were the words I heard from a IT executive pretty much summarising the way IT industry reacts to Digital today. We work in digital transformation projects which would be just called transformation projects a few years ago.

Unsurprisingly companies are seeking for Digital Architects to support these projects, whereas they would be just looking for Technology Architects before digital became the fund-securing-word. Funnily enough, if you look at to required job skills, you can hardly spot any significant difference…

Designing something from an idea or as in many cases from a problem that needs to be solved is surely an exciting but not always an easy process. We architects have to make sure we design the best possible solution, meeting all the business requirements while adhering to global and organisational design best practices. One challenge we commonly face is incompletely or ambiguously expressed requirements which turn the analysis process into solving a Rubik's cube problem while skydiving. Furthermore, as we architects are mostly the middleman between business teams and technology units, we have to carefully manage the perceptions and…

Digital is big. It is not only big in the size of the hype it created but also big in its breadth and impact. It has become the code name for anything mixing the latest in technology with dazzling customer experience. Wikipedia’s definition of digital transformation refers to it as the next chapter in technology literacy where technology amalgamates with creativity and innovation.

It is obvious that technology is a significant component to digital transformation but one should not make the mistake of deeming it as the most essential ingredient. In fact, in some business domains a successful digital transformation…

Bimodal IT has lately become one of the hottest topics in the IT. In fact, if this is the first time you are hearing about Bimodal IT, you are more than a year late to the discussion.

I, on the other hand, see myself at the same distance to both parties. I believe, Bimodal IT is not a state you would be targeting nor a one you should avoid at all costs. Bimodal IT can be used as an interim model on the way to reaching IT nirvana.

IT organisations are large organisations consisting of numerous subunits which are constantly…

This is not a blog post about an emerging technology or a hot off the press IT trend, but just some notes about one of the pillars of every successful architecture work: Reference Architectures. This one explains what reference architectures are and why and how they are used in solution architectures.

Overview

Reference Architectures are template architecture blueprints for solution designing. They can also come into your way under different names, such as:

• Reference Architecture Framework
• Industry Reference Framework
• Industry Model
• Reference Model
• Capability Model

Reference Architectures provide pre-designed architecture elements which can be further customized into a desired solution. They…

As the world history repeats itself, we also see the technology repeating itself in various ways. I remember presenting an über cool, AJAX-based application development solution to customers back in 2006. I was telling how it was different to traditional web applications that it was just updating the fragments on the UI not reloading the whole page. One day in a customer demo, a veteran developer said “We had this in 80s in mainframe terminal screens and it wasn’t a big deal!” …