Obviously as a stakeholder and user of many organizational designs, I've been interested in organizational architecture for a long time. I began to see the relationship between system and organizational design, however, after a friend observed that "technology architecture tends to follow the organization", rather than the other way around (as you, or at least most, architects) would expect the world to behave.
In his First Law of Distributed Object Design ("Don't!"), Fowler argues that all system designs should limit the number of (internal and exgternal?) distribution boundaries. Sometimes this is called "limiting the exposed surface area". I believe this principle applies equally well to both man-made computer systems and organizations. System and Organization are both sub-classes of Organism.
P.S. A (different) friend has suggested that I need to find a couple of partners: the desired partnership name would be "Quid, Sovereign and Farthing". Anyone willing to change their names to Quid or Farthing?
Copyright John Sovereign, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
Aphorism of the Day: On Leadership
Motivational aphorism for the day:
I'd rather be thought of as a leader than be a "thought leader"....
Copyright John Sovereign, 2006
I'd rather be thought of as a leader than be a "thought leader"....
Copyright John Sovereign, 2006
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Data is a Virus
To paraphrase William S. Burroughs, "Data is a Virus"....
Data is the life-blood of any modern organization. A common problem at any IT shop is the proliferation of data sources and stores. Data management is a key IT capability which typically has no single owner. And unlike most other IT assets, data tends to move around a lot and grow quickly. Data is like life itself: it has an inherent desire to replicate. Like the stuff in your garage, it will grow to exceed all available disk space.
Some data, like a customer’s SSN and other Non-Public Information (NPI), needs to be quarantined like a “hot” virus. It should have an indisputable chain of ownership like the evidence on CSI. Few systems have the capability to track sensitive information at this level. How do organizations obtain this capability throughout core information models like Customer? Only by establishing iron-clad enterprise-wide information meta-models that “strongly type” these fine-grained data elements and requiring applications, middleware and tooling to enforce these rules.
If your business and systems architecture does not anticipate this life force, these pathogens will escape from behind your firewalls. I've even heard of some organizations contemplating “banning” data replication as a technical fix, as if they could ban life itself. If your IT shop isn’t demonstrably working towards practical, comprehensive management of your data (more than information security “awareness programs” or overly restrictive hobbling of your application delivery), they are exposing your brand to “tar and feathering” in the marketplace.
Copyright John Sovereign, 2006
Data is the life-blood of any modern organization. A common problem at any IT shop is the proliferation of data sources and stores. Data management is a key IT capability which typically has no single owner. And unlike most other IT assets, data tends to move around a lot and grow quickly. Data is like life itself: it has an inherent desire to replicate. Like the stuff in your garage, it will grow to exceed all available disk space.
Some data, like a customer’s SSN and other Non-Public Information (NPI), needs to be quarantined like a “hot” virus. It should have an indisputable chain of ownership like the evidence on CSI. Few systems have the capability to track sensitive information at this level. How do organizations obtain this capability throughout core information models like Customer? Only by establishing iron-clad enterprise-wide information meta-models that “strongly type” these fine-grained data elements and requiring applications, middleware and tooling to enforce these rules.
If your business and systems architecture does not anticipate this life force, these pathogens will escape from behind your firewalls. I've even heard of some organizations contemplating “banning” data replication as a technical fix, as if they could ban life itself. If your IT shop isn’t demonstrably working towards practical, comprehensive management of your data (more than information security “awareness programs” or overly restrictive hobbling of your application delivery), they are exposing your brand to “tar and feathering” in the marketplace.
Copyright John Sovereign, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
