This is our first bi-monthly newsletter.

We have tried to improve the newsletter by taking a little more time to prepare it.

I hope you approve!

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During the early stages of any collaborative effort, when group members are forming commitment to a team, a project, an idea, a way of working together, involvement in the design of the team's physical and virtual space can help clarify and solidify goals and processes. Communal design of a project room or team space can help the group think about how members are going to work together, as well as promote esprit de corps. The work space that results is likely to be highly functional, having been designed by the people who actually use it, and one that can serve as a concrete reminder of group identity and resolve.

While creativity can't be programmed, the environment can be used to "influence the pattern of experiences over time, increasing the probability that new ideas or connections will occur to people who can do something with them.

Work space (virtual or physical) should be -

• Stimulating environments that display information about work in progress, the market, what's happening in the project and the world.
• Resource-rich, so ideas can be pursued immediately;
• Unconstrained, "in terms of what it's okay to try or do"; and
• User-controllable, in terms of being able to manage accessibility and distractions.

In addition to stimulating ideas, visual display or representation can serve as a medium of collaboration. It can be called "shared space." It can be a whiteboard, a project room with models or prototypes, an intranet home page, or just a paper napkin passed between two people at a coffee bar. Whether physical or electronic, shared space is essential to successful collaboration, providing a medium for communication that goes beyond the exchange of information that typifies meetings and conversations to allow people to create information, to think out loud, together.

Important qualities of shared space are;

• equally accessible to all team members,

• dynamic and easily manipulable,
• capable of recording and preserving collaborative thought,
• stimulates the senses as well as the mind,
• creates a sense of co-presence, even when collaborators are separated by distance or time.

The space becomes a partner in the collaborative process, ensuring that "the whole of the relationship is greater than the sum of the individuals' expertise."

Transformation
Team settings should be easy to manipulate and rearrange, to allow their users to alter them to meet changing requirements of different stages in the life cycle of the collaboration and to allow organizations to renew and reuse them for other groups and purposes when that cycle is complete.
Achieving the appropriate balance of separation and stimulation for a given stage of collaborative effort requires a highly flexible environment to rearrange adjacencies and boundaries to accommodate changing needs. The isolated project room or off-site location that protects concentration or stimulates creative thought during one phase of the process may hinder vital contact with people and ideas during another phase.

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• All of the information technology used and planned for use within the State for the 1999 to 2001 time frame.
• The architectures of State applications (but not their application-related content).
• The ways in which the State applications and strategies are developed and deployed within the State of Kansas.
• The ways in which information system services are delivered to users.
• The standards and components that are to be used to guide the development and delivery of information systems services within State agencies, and to other government entities that need to communicate with Kansas government.

Both PDF and Word formats of this architecture are available online.

It has recently been updated (August 25, 2000) and is in revision 8.

Technically the site is simple to navigate and straight forward as to content.

This site is a extremely nice reference resource.

There are seven sections

PREFACE

1. INTRODUCTION

2. ARCHITECTURE PRIMER

3. ARCHITECTURE OBJECTIVES

5. NETWORK MANAGEMENT

6. INTERNET/INTRANET

8. STORAGE

10. CONSOLE EVENT MANAGEMENT

11. HELP DESK & PROBLEM MANAGEMENT

12. CHANGE AND CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

13. BUSINESS CONTINUITY

14-A APPENDIX: APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES

15. APPLICATION STRUCTURE

16. APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES

17. WORKGROUP SERVICES

19. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

20. RECORDS MANAGEMENT & PRESERVATION

II. REFERENCES

III. RUNNING LIST OF RISKS, ACTION ITEMS

IV. ARCHITECTURE NARRATIVES

V. SYNTHETIC ARCHITECTURE

VI. STATE CONTRACTS

VII. PLATFORM SIZING AND PLANNING GUIDELINES

VIII. TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE POLICIES

IX. TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE REVIEW BOARD

X. TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE INTERSECTIONS

It should be noted that the architecture is more of a guideline as there are few (if any) enforceable standards, most standard statements are permissive (guidelines).

The standards indicated are industry standards not organizational standards, using an Emerging, Current and Twilight standard classification.

It is commendable that their futures are broken down into short, medium and long-term futures.

The site is definitely worth spending some time on!

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This is the second 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!

Software architecture is getting a lot of attention. Is it just the silver bullet du jour? We think not. It surely is critical to today's business success, yet it requires technical, business and organizational talents and skills that warrant their own path of career development, education, and research.

This site organizes a variety of resources to help software architects deepen and expand their understanding of software architecture and the role of the architect.

This site is primarily aimed at software architects, however, it does contain extensive information for enterprise architects as well as software types.

The author of the site, Dana Bredemeyer, recognizes the close ties between the software and enterprise architectures.

Especially of note for Enterprise Architects are the white papers:

The author of these and other products on the site

(Dana Bredemeyer) is a well know speaker at the Enterprise Architecture conferences and will be presenting in New Orleans at the end of the month at DCI's EA Conference.

The site addresses:

It also provides links to a broad collection of sites related to software and enterprise architecture, bibliographies, and papers and downloads. In addition, it describes our training and consulting services targeted at enterprise and software architects, and architecture program managers.

Dana Bredemeyer

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David McAfee, Senior Technical Consultant at Enterprise-Wide IT Architecture, leads this discussion on integrating enterprise business requirements with the operations and management of enterprise IT.

META Group & DCI Present "The Enterprise Architectures Conference" New Orleans
Thursday, October 26, 2000, 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM

David McAfee, Enterprise-Wide Information Technology Architects

The converging technology trends of staffing shortages and the demand to do more with less in a shorter time-frame have required that organizations develop a plan or architecture that will ensure the survival of the business organization. Because of time and other resource constraints, many organizations are requiring an expedited development of the Architecture. In some (but not all) organizations a successful architecture can be developed in just a few weeks. The session allows you to determine if your organization is one of those that can benefit from an expedited architecture. Real life proven methods, processes, examples, schedules and tools will be discussed.

Determine if the ''sucking sound of money'' is necessary to achieve executive buy-in

Learn which development methods appear to be most effective for the timeframe

Anticipate some of the problems associated with the adoption of an architecture

Sources for free and for fee tools to assist in the development of a Architecture

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