Issue 0007 09/30/00
From: David McAFee
Date: Sat Sep 30, 2000 3:28pm
Subject: EA/EWITA 09/30/00 Planning for Communcations, Ohio Site Spotlight, Ptech, Inc Vendor Spotlight, What's new

Welcome to the September 30, 2000 issue of this newsletter!
We will be going to a twice a month issue starting the month of October.
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Table of Contents
1. Timely review of documents (What do you mean, you don't have the time?) or Planning for communications
Site Spotlight
Vendor Spotlight
A word about last weeks article (or Ah, feed back!):
There he goes again
EWITA Website Changes
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Hammering away in the garage
Timely review of documents (What do you mean, you don't have the time?) or Planning for communications
Background:
In my past lives, one of the most important things for staff was the timely review of product developed by that staff. Lack of sponsor review and/or participation have caused entire projects to fail. Staff have sought and found other jobs for this reason.
In cases in my own experience, strategic documents have been "lost" on the manager's desk until they become stale and un-important.
When I, as one of the architecture group for a large organization, met with the new consultants (Grant Thorton) counterparts for our Business Driven Architecture, we were asked to describe how we felt the consultant staff could best be of service to accomplish the architecture in the shortest period. When my turn came I said "Provide the sucking sound of money". After everyone got over their astonishment, I further explained that we needed a contractual obligation by the management to participate, review and comment within limited time frames. I believe that as a result of that conversation the following text was added to the statement of work.
Expectations
· The IT Executive Team, Architecture Manager and staff will be available during the defined timeframes to assist the vendor
· The consultant will receive all available information relating to Organization’s current environment and organization to support this effort.
· The schedule of this effort is dependent on the full-time involvement of no less than three professional Organization Architecture team members. Full-time is defined as a minimum of 40 hours of project work per week. Should there be any less Organization involvement it may impact the project end date and cost
· The schedule is dependent on the consensus sessions being conducted for certain decisions. Should there be a significant delay in the consensus process it may impact the project end date and cost
· All document reviews and feedback will be performed within the time allotted
Now the question became how to define the timeframes that the first bullet required. The consultant dug into their bag of tools and brought out a plan called the "communications plan" that developed the interface of each person associated with the project. It indicated who the participants were, their organizations, expected time to accomplish tasks, what their participation was, the product, and the review timeframes.
Looking back over the project, the lead architect and myself have discussed what made the project a success and we both felt the communication plan was one of the major causes of that success. It does however require both the plan and the contractual obligation to meet that plan.
BTW - "The sucking sound of money" phrase was somewhat infamous in the consultant firm and has spread to other states and state agencies.
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Site Spotlight
US, ST, OH
Ohio Enterprise Architecture
"Enterprise Architecture is designed to allow all agencies to communicate and share data to guarantee timely delivery of accurate information to all consumers, particularly the citizens of the state of Ohio.
The Ohio project began when Ohio's Chief Information Officer and the Interagency Information Management Group realized that for Ohio’s information technology to progress, a structured, coordinated effort crossing agency boundaries must exist.
To that end, the state of Ohio will adopt and implement a standards-based IT architecture which assures timely, accurate and cost-effective information delivery from source to consumer, regardless of platform, technology or location." Source - site.
Business Drivers
Governance
Architectural Requirements
Conceptual Architecture
Component Committees
Reports
A Conceptual Architecture for the Information Technology of the State of Ohio (PDF, 33 pages, 129K)
Ohio Information Technology Direction Statement 1998 (PDF, 55 pages, 530K)
Electronic Messaging and Directory Service Architecture (PDF, 27 pages, 266K)
An Application Architecture for the Information Technology for the State of Ohio (PDF, 39 pages, 198K)
Middleware Infrastructure Requirements (PDF, 22 pages, 198K)
Groupware Architecture (PDF, 20 pages, 49K)
An Information Technology Systems Management for the State of Ohio (PDF, 32 pages, 187K)
An E-Commerce Architecture for the State of Ohio (PDF, 55 pages, 974K)
An Information Technology Security Architecture for the State of Ohio (PDF, 49 pages,427K)
An Internet, Intranet, Extranet Architecture for the Information Technology for the State of Ohio (PDF, 64 pages, 230K)
Environmental Trends
Related Links
Editor's Comments:
A well crafted, easily navigated site. I especially like the navigation bar that snapshots the entire site. The actual architectures appear to be captured in the Reports area as PDF files. It is unfortunate that the navigation of the site was not carried to the individual architectures as the relationships between the them are not evident. To utilize the architecture, a user would probably have to print out the PDF's.
Standards are expressed as a "Avoid new deployment, Current technology, and Emerging technology" table, this is a nice feature as it shows the legacy, actual and future directions in one area.
It appears this architecture is based on Meta's Adaptive Architecture model (business requirements, architectural requirements, principles and best practices).
I would suggest that you limit any initial contacts to Contact DAS as they are somewhat sensitive to mail to all the addresses on the site.
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Vendor Spotlight
This is the first of a series of spotlights about vendors to the EA community, it is not meant as an endorsement, simply information. If you know of a vendor that provides service to the EA community, send me a brief write-up. We will run one spotlight per issue on a first come, first published basis. There are no compensations associated with this spotlight!

Ptech Inc. -
From the site:
The Ptech IT Architecture Accelerator (ITAA) base extension offers support for managing technology assets in an organization and aligning them with the business plans and needs of the organization. IT architects and managers, business planners, and project managers have the ability to create an integrated framework for capturing, analyzing, and designing technology infrastructure while relating it to business strategies and processes.
From Editor:
The product supports the Zachman, Boar and custom frameworks. They have excellent graphics in a PowerPoint presentation at http://www.ptech.com/itaa/ITAA_Presentation.ppt.
From the vendor:
Ptech Inc. is the premier enabler of Enterprise Architecture and eBusiness Architecture solutions. Ptech empowers organizations to confidently manage risk and adapt to change so they can quickly capitalize on new market opportunities. Ptech solutions provide clients with the ability to make informed decisions at the speed of eBusiness.
Founded in 1994, Ptech Inc. is a privately-held solution provider headquartered in Boston, MA, focused on serving Fortune 2000 companies as well as the government sector. Complementing Ptech’s consulting expertise and its complete service and technology transfer program is a set of award-winning tools employed to strengthen and enhance the enterprise value chain. To learn more about Ptech and eBusiness processes for agile companies, call us at 800-955-9345 or vist our Web site at www.ptechinc.com.
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A word about last weeks article (or Ah, feed back!):
Apparently I left some incorrect impressions with last week's article:
It was a team project - There was a Grant Thorton (GT) consultant team who formed an excellent partnership with the department. The project core team had total of 7 full time architects (three GT consultants) supplemented by additional consulting staff as needed, with up to five extended architecture teams with 4 to 20 people reviewing and modifying the strawdogs over a period of 2 years. As a result of that partnership, my estimate of consultants in general grew more positive each day.
There was also a impression that all the strawdogs had origins in North Carolina, of the five domains that were finally adopted by the Department, two had basis in that state (Infrastructure, Data), a third (Security) was based on a document out of Britain and the final ones(Applications, Governance) were uniquely developed, primarily by GT staff with department assistance. These strawdogs each went through a consensus cycle internally within the core architecture project team prior to "public review".
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There he goes again
I have accepted the responsibility of leading a RoundTable on the SolutionCentral website for the next 3 months. The subject is Enterprise Architecture (of course). So if you have a question or statement (other than I'm ugly) please join the discussion.
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EWITA Website Changes
We have moved all navigation to the new EWITA site!
Added 09/30/2000
Search Ability to search both sites (ewita.com and lanset.com/dmcafee)
Kudos All those recognitions I have received for the EWITA sites
Administration Page Moved all forms, stats and sponsored images to this page
Management Overviews and Introductions General reading, short and to the point.
Early Work - IT Architecture (ITA) Some early research and papers on developing an IT Architecture (1997)
Early Work - Consulting Papers Some early consulting work that is still valid (pre 1997)
Resumes Resumes for myself and friends who help set up the site(s)