Tag Archives: Cohesion

Microservices or Monoliths – Fences and Neighbors

Posted on by

Photo of fence separating fields from a road

 

At the end of my last post, “What Makes a Monolith Monolithic?”, I stated that I didn’t consider the term “monolithic” to be inherently derogatory. It is, rather, a descriptive term relating to the style of organizing an application’s architecture. Depending on the context the system operates within, a monolithic architectural style could lie anywhere on the continuum between perfectly suited and perfectly disastrous. Placing it on that continuum requires a sense of what qualities are most needed or desired and which can be traded off in their stead. Everything comes with a cost, and attempting to ignore that fact merely sets us up for unpleasant future surprises.

After an initial period of unbridled enthusiasm, opinion seemed to gel around the idea that highly distributed application architectures (aka microservice architectures) were not suitable to all contexts. There are prerequisites for jumping into the microservices pool in terms of problem architecture, infrastructure, and organization. Attempting to shoehorn a microservice architecture into an environment that cannot support it will be overly expensive at best and a failure of apocalyptic proportions at worst.

There are many aspects of application design that are commonly recognized as beneficial: modularity, loose-coupling, high cohesion, and separation of concerns. It is critical to realize that these aspects can be found in systems with microservice architectures, monolithic systems, and everything in between. Distributed architectures are not necessary for modularity, nor any of those other aspects. In fact, one could easily create an application with a microservice architecture whose qualities are opposite to these desirable ones.

There are, however, situations where the benefit of a microservice architecture outweighs the costs and complexity. The ability to independently deploy and scale the various parts of an application is a major benefit, in my opinion. A well designed microservice architecture can even allow for the components of an application to be replaced on the fly. These features are not unique to microservice architectures, but are arguably easier to achieve than in other application architectures.

Real design, balancing both costs and benefits, is required. Sticking a bit of network in between the components is insufficient to ensure success. Deliberate design, especially as the boundaries multiply, is critical for an effective system. Identifying and providing for those boundaries at the conceptual level (i.e. before they become physical) is key. Good fences can either make for good neighbors, or they can create a maze of barriers.

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 450

Posted on by

SPaMCAST logo

It’s time for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast.

This week’s episode, number 450, features Tom’s excellent essay on roadmaps and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Holistic Architecture – Keeping the Gears Turning”.

Our conversation in this episode continues with the organizations as system concept, this time from the standpoint of how the social system impacts (often negatively) the software systems the social systems rely on. Specifically, we talk about how an organization that fails to manage itself as a system can lead to an architecture of both the enterprise and its IT that resembles “spare parts flying in formation”. It’s not a good situation, no matter how well made those spare parts are!

You can find all my SPaMCast episodes using under the SPaMCast Appearances category on this blog. Enjoy!

Holistic Architecture – Keeping the Gears Turning

Posted on by

Gears Turning Animation

In last week’s post, “Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?”, I talked about how to define “legacy systems”. Essentially, as the divergence grows between the needs of social systems and the fitness for purpose of the software systems that enable them, the more likely that those software systems can considered “legacy”. The post attracted a few comments.

I love comments.

It’s nearly impossible to have writers’ block when you’ve got smart people commenting on your work and giving you more to think about. I got just that courtesy of theslowdiyer. The comment captured a critical point:

Agree that ALM is important, and actually also for a different reason – a financial one:

First of all, the cost of operating the system though the full Application Life Cycle (up to and including decommissioning) needs to be incorporated in the investment calculation. Some organisations will invariably get this wrong – by accident or by (poor) design (of processes).

But secondly (and this is where I have seen things go really wrong): If you invest a capability in the form of a new system then once that system is no longer viable to maintain, you probably still need the capability. Which means that if you are adding new capabilities to your system landscape, some form of accruals to sustain the capability ad infinitum will probably be required.

The most important thing is the capability, not the software system.

The capability is an organizational/enterprise concern. It belongs to the social systems that comprise the organization and the over-arching enterprise. This is not to say that software systems are not important – lack of automation or systems that have slipped into the legacy category can certainly impede the enterprise. However, without the enterprise, there is no purpose for the software system. Accordingly, we need to keep our focus centered on the key concern, the capability. So long as the capability is important to enterprise, then all the components, both social and technical, need to be working in harmony. In short, there’s a need for cohesion.

Last fall, Grady Booch tweeted:

Ruth Malan replied with a great illustration of it from her “Design Visualization: Smoke and Mirrors” slide deck:

Obviously, no one would want to fly on a plane in that state (which illustrates the enterprise IT architecture of too many organizations). The more important thing, however, is that even if the plane (the technical architecture of the enterprise) is perfectly cohesive, if the social system maintaining and operating it is similarly fractured, it’s still unsafe. If I thought that pilots, mechanics, and air traffic controllers were all operating at cross purposes (or at least without any thought of common cause), I’d become a fan of travel by train.

Unfortunately, for too many organizations, accidental architecture is the most charitable way to describe the enterprise. Both social and technical systems have been built up on an ad hoc basis and allowed to evolve without reference to any unifying plan. Technical systems tend to be built (and worse, maintained) according to project-oriented mindset (aka “done and run”) leading to an expensive cycle of decay, then fix. The social systems can become self-perpetuating fiefs. The level of cohesion between the two, to the extent that it existed, breaks down even more.

A post from Matt Balantine, “Garbage In” illustrates the cohesion issue across both social and technical systems. Describing an attempt to analyze spending data across a large organization composed of federated subsidiaries:

The theory was that if we could find the classifications that existed across each of the organisations, we could then map them, Rosetta Stone-like, to a standard schema. As we spoke to each of the organisations we started to realise that there may be a problem.

The classification systems that were in use weren’t being managed to achieve integrity of data, but instead to deliver short-term operational needs. In most cases the classification was a drop-down list in the Finance system. It hadn’t been modelled – it just evolved over time, with new codes being added as necessary (and old ones not being removed because of previous use). Moreover, the classifications weren’t consistent. In the same field information would be encapsulated in various ways.

Even in more homogeneous organizations, I would expect to find something similar. It’s extremely common for aspects of one capability to bear on others. What is the primary concern for one business unit may be one of many subsidiary concerns for another (see “Making and Taming Monoliths” for an illustrated example). Because of the disconnected way capabilities (and their supporting systems) are traditionally developed, however, there tends to be a lot of redundant data. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (e.g. a cache is redundant data maintained for performance purposes). What is a bad thing is when the disconnects cause disagreements and no governance exists to mediate the disputes. Not having an authoritative source is arguably worse than having no data at all since you don’t know what to trust.

Having an idea of what pieces exist, how they fit together, and how they will evolve while remaining aligned is, in my opinion, critical for any system. When it’s a complex socio-technical system, this awareness needs to span the whole enterprise stack (social and technical). Time and effort spent maintaining coherence across the enterprise, rather than detracting from the primary concerns will actually enhance them.

Are you confident that the plane will stay in the air or just hoping that the wing doesn’t fall off?

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 438

Posted on by

SPaMCAST logo

Once again, I’m making an appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast.

This week’s episode, number 438, features Tom’s essay on using sizing for software testing, Kim Pries with a Software Sensei column (canned solutions), and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Organizations as Systems and Innovation”.

In this episode, Tom and I discuss how systems must fit into their context and ecosystem, otherwise it can be like dropping a high-performance sports car engine into a VW Beetle. Disney-physics may work in the movies, but it’s unlikely to be successful in the real world. If all the parts don’t fit together, friction ensues.

You can find all my SPaMCast episodes using under the SPaMCast Appearances category on this blog. Enjoy!

You can’t always get what you want…

Posted on by

Lucifer

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need

When it comes to systems, you can’t always get what you want, but you do get what you design (intentionally or not), whether it’s what you need or not.

In other words, the architecture of systems, both social and software, evolve through some combination of intentional design and accidental emergence. Regardless of which end of the continuum the system leans toward, the end result will reflect the decisions made (or not made) in relation to various stimuli. Regarding businesses (a social system), Ruth Malan, in her February 2012 “Trace in Sand” post, put it this way:

I have been talking about agility in terms of evolutionary ecology, but with the explicit recognition that companies, comprised after all of individuals, attempt to speed and alter and intervene and interject and intercede and (I’m looking for the right word here) shape evolutionary processes with intentional actions — concerted, but also emergent from more and less choreographed, actions and intentions. Being bumped along by the unpredictable interactions of others, some from within, but also from “invasive species” from other ecosystems looking for new applications for their adaptable, mutable capability set.

Organizations create and participate in business ecologies. They build up the relationships that stabilize parts of the broader ecosystem, and create conditions for organizational forms to thrive there. They create products, they create the seeds of the next generation of harvest. They produce variants on their family tree, to target and develop niches.

Ruth further notes that while business adapt and improve in some cases, in other case they have “…become too closely adapted to and integrated within an ecosystem that has been replaced or significantly restructured by some landscape reshaping change…”. People generally refer to this phenomenon as disruption and the way they refer to it would seem to imply that it’s something that happens to or is done to a company. The role of the organization in its own difficulties (or demise) isn’t, in my opinion, well understood.

Last Friday, I saw a tweet from Noah Sussman that provides a useful heuristic for predicting the behavior of any large social system:

the actual reason behind the behavior:

It’s not that people are actively working to harm the organization, but that when there is no leadership, where there is no design, where there is no learning, the system ossifies and breaks down. Being perfectly adapted to an ecosystem that no longer exists is indistinguishable from being poorly adapted to the present context. I’m reminded of what Tom Graves stated in “The game of enterprise-architecture”: “things work better when they work together, on purpose”.

Without direction, entropy emerges where coherence is needed.

This is not to say, however, that micro-management is the answer. Too much design/control is as toxic as too little. This is particularly the case when the management system isn’t intentionally designed. Management that is both ad hoc and rigid can cause new problems while trying to solve existing ones. This is illustrated by another tweet from Friday:

The desire to avoid the “…embarrassment of cancellation” led to the decision to risk the lives of a plane load of “…foreign TV and radio journalists and also other foreign notables…”. I suspect that the fiery deaths of those individuals would have been an even bigger embarrassment. The system, however, led to the person who had the decision-making power to take that gamble.

The system works the way you built it, even when you didn’t intend to build it to work that way.

Emergence: Babies and Bathwater, Plans and Planning

Posted on by

blueprints

 

“Emergent” is a word that I run into from time to time. When I do run into it, I’m reminded of an exchange from the movie Gallipoli:

Archy Hamilton: I’ll see you when I see you.
Frank Dunne: Yeah. Not if I see you first.

The reason for my ambivalent relationship with the word is that it’s frequently used in a sense that doesn’t actually fit its definition. Dictionary.com defines it like this:

adjective

1. coming into view or notice; issuing.
2. emerging; rising from a liquid or other surrounding medium.
3. coming into existence, especially with political independence: the emergent nations of Africa.
4. arising casually or unexpectedly.
5. calling for immediate action; urgent.
6. Evolution. displaying emergence.

noun

7. Ecology. an aquatic plant having its stem, leaves, etc., extending above the surface of the water.

Most of the adjective definitions apply to planning and design (which I consider to be a specialized form of planning). Number 3 is somewhat tenuous for that sense and and 5 only applies sometimes, but 6 is dead on.

My problem, however, starts when it’s used as a euphemism for a directionless. The idea that a cohesive, coherent result will “emerge” from responding tactically (whether in software development or in managing a business) is, in my opinion, a dangerous one. I’ve never heard an explanation of how strategic success emerges from uncoordinated tactical excellence that doesn’t eventually come down to faith. It’s why I started tagging posts on the subject “Intentional vs Accidental Architecture”. Success that arises from lack of coordination is accidental rather than by design (not to mention ironic when the lack of intentional coordination or planning/design is intentional itself):

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

 

The problem, of course, is do you want to be at the “there” you wind up at? There’s also the issue of cost associated with a meandering path when a more direct route was available.

None of this, however, should be taken as a rejection of emergence. In fact, a dogmatic attachment to a plan in the face of emergent facts is as problematic as pursuing an accidental approach. Placing your faith in a plan that has been invalidated by circumstances is as blinkered an approach as refusing to plan at all. Neither extreme makes much sense.

We lack the ability to foresee everything that can occur, but that limit does not mean that we should ignore what we can foresee. A purely tactical focus can lead us down obvious blind alleys that will be more costly to back out of in the long run. Experience is an excellent teacher, but the tuition is expensive. In other words, learning from our mistakes is good, but learning from other’s mistakes is better.

Darwinian evolution can produce lead to some amazing things provided you can spare millions of years and lots of failed attempts. An intentional approach allows you to tip the scales in your favor.

Many thanks to Andrew Campbell and Adrian Campbell for the multi-day twitter conversation that spawned this post. Normally, I unplug from almost all social media on the weekends, but I enjoyed the discussion so much I bent the rules. Cheers gentlemen!

Organizations as Systems and Innovation

Posted on by

Portrait of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden

Over the last year or so, the concept of looking at organizations as systems has been a major theme for me. Enterprises, organizations and their ecosystems (context) are social systems composed of a fractal set of social and software systems. As such, enterprises have an architecture.

Another long-term theme for this site has been my conversation with Greger Wikstrand regarding innovation. This post is the thirty-fifth entry in that series.

So where do these two intersect? And why is there a picture of a Swedish king from four-hundred years ago up there?

Innovation, by its very nature (“…significant positive change”), does not happen in a vacuum. Greger’s last post, “Innovation arenas and outsourcing”, illustrates one aspect of this. Shepherding ideas into innovations is a deliberate activity requiring structural support. Being intentional doesn’t turn bad ideas into innovations, but lack of a system can cause an otherwise good idea to wither on the vine.

Another intersection, the one I’m focusing on here, can be found in the nature of innovation itself. It’s common to think of technological innovation, but innovation can also be found in changes to organizational structure and processes (e.g. Henry Ford and the assembly line). Organization, process, and technology are not only areas for innovation, but when coupled with people, form the primary elements of an enterprise architecture. It should be clear that the more these elements are intentionally coordinated towards a specific goal, the more cohesive the effort should be.

This brings us to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. In his twenty years on the throne, he converted Sweden into a major power in Europe. Militarily, he upended the European status quo in a very short time (after intervening in the Thirty Years’ War in 1630, he was killed in battle in 1632) by marshaling organizational, procedural, technological innovations:

The Swedish army stood apart from its’ contemporaries through five characteristics. Its’ soldiers wore uniform and had a nucleus of native Swedes, raised from a surprisingly diplomatic system of conscription, at its’ core. The Swedish regiments were small in comparison to their opponents and were lightly equipped for speed. Each regiment had its’ own light and mobile field artillery guns called ‘leathern guns’ that were easy to handle and could be easily manoeuvred to meet sudden changes on the battlefield. The muskets carried by these soldiers were of a type superior to that in general use and allowed for much faster rates of fire. Swedish cavalry, instead of galloping up to the enemy, discharging their pistols and then turning around and galloping back to reload, ruthlessly charged with close quarter weapons once their initial shot had been expended. By analysing this paradigm it becomes apparent that the army under Gustavus emphasized speed and manoeuvrability above all – this greatly set him apart from his opponents.

By themselves, none of the innovations were original to Gustavus. Combining them together, however, was and European military practice was irrevocably changed. Inflection points can be dependent on multiple technologies catching up with one another (since the future is “…not very evenly distributed”), but in this case the pieces were all in place. The catalyst was someone with the vision to combine them, not random chance.

Emergence will be a factor in any complex system. That being said, the inevitability of those emergent events does not invalidate intentional design and planning. If anything, design and planning is more necessary to deal with the mundane, foreseeable things in order to leave more cognitive capacity to deal with that which can’t be foreseen.

Monolithic Applications and Enterprise Gravel

Posted on by

Pebbles

It’s been almost a year since I’ve written anything about microservices, and while a lot has been said on that subject, it’s one I still monitor to see what new pops up. The opening of a blog post that I read last week caught my attention:

Coined by Melvin Conway in 1968, Conway’s Law states: “Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.” In software development terms, Conway’s Law suggests that a given team will build apps that mirror the team’s organizational structure. Siloed functional teams produce siloed application architectures.

The result is a monolith: A massive application whose functionality is crammed into a few crowded parts. Scaling a simple pattern to the enterprise level often results in a monolith.

None of this is wrong, per se, but in reading it, one could come to a wrong conclusion. Siloed functional teams (particularly where the culture of the organization encourages siloed business units) produce siloed application architectures that are most likely monoliths. From an enterprise IT architecture aspect, though, the result is not monolithic. Googling the definition of “monolithic”, we get this:

mon·o·lith·ic
ˌmänəˈliTHik/
adjective
  1. formed of a single large block of stone.
  2. (of an organization or system) large, powerful, and intractably indivisible and uniform.
    “rejecting any move toward a monolithic European superstate”
    synonyms: inflexible, rigid, unbending, unchanging, fossilized
    “a monolithic organization”

Rather than “a single large block of stone”, we get gravel. The architecture of the enterprise’s IT isn’t “large, powerful, and intractably indivisible and uniform”. It may well be large, but its power in relation to its size will be lacking. Too much effort is wasted reinventing wheels and maintaining redundant data (most likely with no real sense of which set of data is authoritative). Likewise, while “intractably indivisible” isn’t a virtue, being intractable while also lacking cohesion is worse. Such an IT architecture is a foundation built on shifting sand. Lastly, whether the EITA is uniform or not (and I would give good odds that it’s not), is irrelevant given the other negative aspects. Under the circumstances, worrying about uniformity would be like worrying about whether the superstructure of the Titanic had a fresh paint job.

Does this mean that microservices are the answer to having an effective EITA? Hardly.

There are prerequisites for being able to support a microservice architecture; table stakes, if you will. However, the service-oriented mindset can be of value whether it’s applied as far down as the intra-application level (i.e. microservices – it is an application architecture pattern) or inter-application (the more traditional SOA). Where the line is drawn depends on the context of the application(s) and their ecosystem. What can be afforded and supported are critical aspects of the equation at all levels.

What is necessary for an effective EITA is a full-stack approach. Governance and data architecture in particular are important aspects to consider. The goal is consistent, intentional alignment across all levels (enterprise, EITA, solution, and application), promoting a cohesive architecture throughout, not a top-down dictatorship.

Large edifices that last are built from smaller pieces that fit together on purpose.

Design for Life

Posted on by

Soundview, Bronx, NY

 

The underlying theme of my last post, “Babies, Bathwater, and Software Architects”, was that it’s necessary to understand the role of a software architect in order to understand the need for that role. If our understanding of the role is flawed, not just missing aspects of what the role should be focusing on, but also largely consisting of things the role should not be concerned with, then we can’t really effectively determine whether the role is needed or not. If a person drowning is told that an anvil is a life-preserver, that doesn’t mean that they don’t need a life-preserver. It does mean they need a better definition of “life-preserver”.

Ruth Malan, answering the question “Do we still need architects?”, captures the essence of what is unique about the concerns of the software architect role:

There’s paying attention to the structural integrity of the code when that competes with the urge to deliver value and all we’ve been able to accomplish in terms of the responsiveness of continuous integration and deployment. We don’t intend to let the code devolve as we respond to unfolding demands, but we have to intend not to, and that takes time — possibly time away from the next increment of user-perceived value. There’s watching for architecturally impactful, structurally and strategically significant decisions, and making sure they get the attention, reflection, expertise they require. Even when the team periodically takes stock, and spends time reflecting learning back into the design/code, the architect’s role is to facilitate, to nurture, the design integrity of the system as a system – as something coherent. Where coherence is about not just fit and function, but system properties. Non-trivial, mutually interacting properties that entail tradeoffs. Moreover, this coherence must be achieved across (microservice, or whatever, focused) teams. This takes technical know-how and know-when, and know-who to work with, to bring needed expertise to bear.

These system properties are crucial, because without a cohesive set of system properties (aka quality of service requirements), the quality of the system suffers:

Even if the parts are perfectly implemented and fly in perfect formation, the quality is still lacking.

A tweet from Charles T. Betz points out the missing ingredient:

Now, even though Frederick Brooks was writing about the architecture of hardware, and the nature of users has drastically evolved over the last fifty-four years, his point remains: “Architecture must include engineering considerations, so that the design will be economica1 and feasible; but the emphasis in architecture is upon the needs of the user, whereas in engineering the emphasis is upon the needs of the fabricator.”

In other words, habitability, the quality of being “livable”, is a critical condition for an architecture. Two systems providing the exact same functionality may not be equivalent. The system providing the “better” (from the user’s perspective) quality of service will most likely be seen as the superior system. In some cases, quality of service concerns can even outweigh functional concerns.

Who, if not the software architect, is looking out for the livability of your system as a whole?

Accidental Innovation?

Posted on by

Hillside Slum

From my very first post, I’ve been writing on the subject of “accidental architecture”, which is also sometimes confused with “emergence”. From the picture on the right (which I used previously on a post titled “Accidental Architecture”), it should be easy to infer what my opinion is in regard to the idea that coherent system can “emerge” via a Darwinian process (at least absent millions of years and a great many extinct evolutionary dead-ends).

This is the thirteenth installment of an ongoing conversation Greger Wikstrand and I have been having about architecture, innovation, and organizations as systems (a list of previous posts can be found at the bottom of the page). In his last post, “Worthless ideas and valuable innovation”, Greger made the point that having ideas is not valuable in and of itself, but being able to turn them into useful innovation is. Triage is vital:

So how do we find the innovation needle in the haystack of ideas? How do we avoid being overwhelmed by all the hay? How do we turn worthless ideas into valuable innovation? Sadly, today the answer is more often than not that we try to “eat all the hay”. We try to implement as many ideas as possible. Sooner or later, often in IT, there is a bottleneck and a huge queue of initiatives build up. “We’ll put that on the backlog”, is the new way of saying “that’ll never happen”.

The answer is to rely on empiricism, short feedback cycles and making small bets. Lean portfolio management has many of the answers, but just as with any idea it is worthless until it is implemented.

Many things can impact our ability to implement. Process, structure, and technology are all important, but people are the key ingredient. There is no silver bullet that we can buy or build. Without the people who provide the intuition, experience and judgement, we are lacking a critical component in the system. It’s no accident that my first post in the “Organizations as Systems” category (written before I ever had an “Innovation” tag on the site) quoted Tom Graves’ “Dotting the joins (the JEA version)”:

Every enterprise is a system – an ‘ecosystem with purpose’ – constrained mainly by its core vision, values and other drivers. Within that system, everything ultimately connects with everything else, and depends on everything else: if it’s in the system, it’s part of the system, and, by definition, the system can’t operate without it.

People provide that purpose (along with the judgement, intuition, experience, etc.). Process, structure, and technology can enhance their efforts, but can just as easily get in the way. The difference between enhancing and impeding seems too important to leave to chance. When the people involved are intentional about their purpose, the scales are tipped. Otherwise, we’re left hoping for a happy accident.

Previous posts in this series:

  1. “We Deliver Decisions (Who Needs Architects?)” – I discussed how the practice of software architecture involved decision-making. It combines analysis with the need for situational awareness to deal with the emergent factors and avoiding cognitive biases.
  2. “Serendipity with Woody Zuill” – Greger pointed me to a short video of him and Woody Zuill discussing serendipity in software development.
  3. “Fixing IT – Too Big to Succeed?” – Woody’s comments in the video re: the stifling effects of bureaucracy in IT inspired me to discuss the need for embedded IT to address those effects and to promote better customer-centricity than what’s normal for project-oriented IT shops.
  4. “Serendipity and successful innovation” – Greger’s post pointed out that structure is insufficient to promote innovation, organizations must be prepared to recognize and respond to opportunities and that innovation must be able to scale.
  5. “Inflection Points and the Ingredients of Innovation” – I expanded on Greger’s post, using WWI as an example of a time where innovation yielded uneven results because effective innovation requires technology, understanding of how to employ it, and an organizational structure that allows it to be used well.
  6. “Social innovation and tech go hand-in-hand” – Greger continued with the same theme, the social and technological aspects of innovation.
  7. “Organizations and Innovation – Swim or Die!” – I discussed the ongoing need of organizations to adapt to their changing contexts or risk “death”.
  8. “Innovation – Resistance is Futile” – Continuing on in the same vein, Greger points out that resistance to change is futile (though probably inevitable). He quotes a professor of his that asserted that you can’t change people or groups, thus you have to change the organization.
  9. “Changing Organizations Without Changing People” – I followed up on Greger’s post, agreeing that enterprise architectures must work “with the grain” of human nature and that culture is “walking the walk”, not just “talking the talk”.
  10. “Developing the ‘innovation habit’” – Greger talks about creating an intentional, collaborative innovation program.
  11. “Innovation on Tap” – I responded to Greger’s post by discussing the need for collaboration across an organization as a structural enabler of innovation. Without open lines of communication, decisions can be made without a feel for customer wants and needs.
  12. “Worthless ideas and valuable innovation” – Greger makes the point that ideas, by themselves, have little or no worth. It’s one thing to have an idea, quite another to be able to turn it into a valuable innovation.

[Shanty Town Image by Otsogey via Wikimedia Commons.]