Blog Danny Greefhorst

Redefining the term "enterprise architecture"

2008-05-06T18:03:15+00:00

Enterprise Architecture has become a real container term; everyone uses it but means something slightly different. This confusion is not very constructive and certainly does not provide enterprise architecture with a positive image to other stakeholders. I therefore propose to reserve the term enterprise architecture only for the highest-level form of architecture; there where the organisation strategy needs to be

SOA: no silver bullet

2008-01-30T20:57:19+00:00

A lot of organisations seem to think that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the silver bullet for a lot of organisational issues, and that an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a universal business adapter that can connect everything transparently. I strongly disagree with such statements: SOA and ESB are overhyped, and are mostly pushed by the IT industry.

It's all about motivation

2007-10-23T19:35:33+00:00

Projects that have been working on the architecture for months. Infrastructure that takes forever to implement because it is just too complex, and that seems to do much more than we need. Endless discussions between enterprise architects and project members about issues that have been talked over again and again. Project architectures that look more like reference architectures and/or meta-models

Technology keeps changing

2007-09-19T19:44:08+00:00

One of the key trends in the IT industry is that technology keeps changing. Was your application developed more than two years ago? Chances are high that it does not comply with new technological developments, product versions or design best-practices. Did you just learn a new programming environment? The latest framework will require you to learn much of it over

A way of working

2007-07-13T12:02:39+00:00

Every now and then I ask myself: what is it I am really doing? I always seem to come up with the same type of answer, independent of the project I am currently in. My work basically consists of understanding the situation,�formulating questions, finding answers by�talking to a lot of people, and�writing�everything down in some structured form. Is this the

The role of models in Enterprise Architecture

2007-06-15T10:06:16+00:00

Lately I have been involved in discussions on the role of models in enterprise architecture. Some people seem to think that an enterprise architecture describes detailed models of current and future situations. Typically these models are stored in an enterprise repository, that could also be filled partially by other sources such as the configuration management database or sourcecode files.

Architecture Vision

2007-03-11T14:46:49+00:00

My vision on architecture is that it is all about making fundamental choices, and influencing the right people in order to achieve the required change. This means that architecture is also very much concerned with change management and stakeholder management. I also believe that architecture should combine top-down and bottom-up views.