World's Better Half

Business ... as usual "What do these guys really do?", " arent these folks the ones good with drawing boxes?". Early meetings that the Enterprise Architecture team was part of, were riddled with unclear expectations, and pre-conceived notions, which meant the value that we deliver isn't communicated, and hence the critical collaboration and support needed from dependent stakeholders would fail to materialize. Management was concerned, the team was worried, there were some frustrations, in scientific terms  ... not good. EA Practice was extensively utilized for developing the Digital Transformation Strategy, and it's been set as one of the governing factors to ensure the success of the strategy. Even though that being the case, not all of our key stakeholders were sure as to what the newly setup department would do, and what we should best do to deliver value for stakeholders. Thus the EA executive survey was formulated, as to what EA can offer, and what our

Back then 2005 Shift to #agile #extremeprogramming (http://www.extremeprogramming.org/) from waterfall based methodologies in a #java and #j2ee ecosystem for  #customercentricity and #agiledelivery.  Today Achieving #businessagility and being #customercentric embarking on #digitaltransfomation, how does one leverage the capabilities of #strategy and its practices such as #enterprisearchitecture, to sync with #agilemethodologies such as scrum , #devsecops, and #scaledagile  and keep delivering innovative business solutions faster than the competition. The answer is not always a framework, but more to do with #organizationalculture and #executiveleadership. However #scaledagileframework provides a platform of understanding to support our above objective. SAFe #safe55 ) aims to achieve business agility using #lean , Agile, and #devops with a knowledge base of integrated principles, practices and competencies. SAFe has success stories from FedEx, American Express, PepsiCo to name a few.  S

Enterprise architecture is a global practice, has to be considered as such and yet to act local, knowing the language of EA in local context is vital. Either for engaging with global communities or SMEs or for communicating with your immediate stakeholders, one must not be short for words. So here is an attempt to share some of those words. Establishing purpose (غرض) of having the EA Office (مكتب البنية المؤسسية) depends on your key stakeholders (أصحاب المصلحة) especially the executives (المدراء التنفيذيين). Some priorities (الأولويات) when you get started are … Creating a shared vision (رؤية), objectives (الأهداف) … understanding customers and the value proposition (عرض القيمة) that you can deliver, and hence setting up your EA Strategy and Operating Model (نموذج التشغيل) … communicating clearly, concisely, consistently the EA value, via an EA Awareness Plan (خطة للحملة التوعوية للبنية المؤسسية) and having a clear EA Communication plan (خطة التواصل للبنية المؤسسية) etc. In parallel se

First Impressions  "Adel is doing some work around services, the DG(Director General) wants you to meet with him" my manager at the time told me. it was year 2013, first time i had heard of the man. A meeting was arranged, old yesser building, third floor, it was the largest meeting room that could comfortably seat 12 people around a U shaped wooden table, the lights were amber not the bright LED light setup we have today, different times.  Reached early for the meeting, had a feeling that this man is important, and sat there on one of the edges, having no idea about what the agenda or who all were expected to participate. A tall, confident and charismatic gentleman entered the room, wearing white thobe and white shemagh his signature style, introduced himself as Adel and we started discussing services. The thing about services is ... it means different things to different people ( obviously... ). He was talking services from a government service point of view, while ... i wa

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 or the CAA is the 6th Amendment to the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955. It was passed by the Parliament of India on 11th December 2019 and provided a path to Indian citizenship for people of 6 faiths, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, if it could be established that they had fled religious persecution in 3 countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The Act is widely seen to be constitutionally problematic, discriminatory and at odds with India’s human rights obligations by large sections of the Indian Citizenry, Indian diaspora, The United Nations and governments of progressive democracies around the world for the following reasons: 1. The CAA makes religion a criterion for obtaining Indian citizenship. This is unprecedented. In addition to being in contravention to India’s secular foundations and its international human rights obligations, this also sets a legal precedent that can be carried across to many

January 2018, at the First National Enterprise Architecture (NEA) Conference, his Excellency Eng. Abdullah Al-Swaha, set the broad mandate of NEA  “To reinforce the concept of Enterprise Architecture, and the importance of its adoption in the sector for accelerating the digital transformation of government entities, raising the Kingdom’s ranking in the UN e-Government Development Index and realizing Saudi Arabia’s Vision of 2030” Since the establishment of NEA for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it has been an un-written prime directive to accelerate, facilitate and enable the advancement and progress of this dynamic and ever evolving great nation. NEA offers its capability and expertise in visualizing whole of government, and then being able to plan, analyze, optimize and govern the nation’s ICT in realizing the vision of 2030. NEA Journey Marsad NEA rolled out the world’s first whole of government service repository called Marsad. The application hav