Musings on Global Travel and Universal Adapters

Most of us who have cellphones, blackberries and PDAs have come to accept the issue of incompatible chargers as a matter of fact. Many of us business travelers also frequently forget chargers either back at home or at the hotels. For instance, on a trip out of town last week, I forgot my phone charger in the hotel room while checking out and realized it only when I got an e-mail from the help-desk next morning asking if I would be collecting it or would like to have it posted to me. Frequent travelers have found workarounds around the problem [get a free phone charger with a little social engineering]

Of course, it is also a logistical challenge for offshoring-globe-trotting executives who have to carry universal adapters and chargers that can plug into different power plugs across the world.
 
The problem of incompatible chargers is not restricted to cellphone makers. Ever been in a conference room where you forgot your laptop adapter and asked around if others have one you can borrow, only to find that you have a Toshiba and your neighbor has a Dell or HP?

The problem of incompatible adapters/chargers is perhaps a fundamental design challenge we see back in the IT world too. And here we don’t even have to think of analogies since the problems are just the same: software vendors defining proprietary gateways and adapters – for reasons best known to them – and the end consumers, IT executives and CIOs continue to scramble around for ‘adapters.’

 

 [Image source: powermega.com]

 [Image source: vagabondish.com]

The  Enterprise Architect and consultant in me is naturally inclined to find a solution for such problems leveraging available toolkits including SOA, integration, software adapters etc etc… just like some innovative marketers who have found a niche supplying universal adapters

However, another part of me wonders if it is the consumer in us that accepts incompatibility from cellphone and laptop manufacturers which also accepts incompatibility from software vendors?

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Musings on Enterprise Architects, Business Architects and glorified Business Analysts

I am consulting with Enterprise Architects of a multinational client, helping define a framework for EA modeling. An area of emerging interest in the group here is around Business Architecture. The members of the core Enterprise Architecture team are seasoned technologists who also have a good grounding of the enterprise drivers and challenges. While they have grounding in the “Business of IS” it is not necessarily the “business” of the organization, which is to say they are not functional experts in HR, Finance or other operational areas.

As I observe and to some extent facilitate the evolution of the Enterprise Architects in the group to don additional hat of Business Architects, I am also reflecting on trends I have seen in the industry: evolution of Business Analysts. Many Business Analysts I have worked with come from a few distinct backgrounds, including:

• Technical Analysts and support staff turned Business Analysts. I have come across many good technical support people (say from the help-desk) who have morphed into Business Analysts successfully. From the time spent working with end-users, they bring in a good “user perspective” to the systems analysis and design but may not always have a “big picture” perspective.
• Management Graduates, MBAs and those from Management Consulting background: These folks bring in a good analytic perspective and “big picture” thinking. They come with a plethora of jargons - SWAG or SWAT and whatnot – but may sometimes need to be goaded towards the basic mantra of KISS.
• Trained modelers : Specialists with some technical and/or functional background who have undergone formal training in Business Process Modelling (with or without a tool). This  genera of Business Process Analysts seem to have a great affinity towards the formal modelling techniques - including BPMN, BPML – but may need the support of experts with functional and technical depth to define meaningful models.

Perhaps less than a decade ago the term “Architect” caught the fancy of the IS and software community and many technologists – including senior folks we used to call Systems Analysts – took on the Architect Moniker. Given that there is now a renewed interest among Enterprise Architects to take on additional focus on Business Architecture, which is by itself highly contextual to individual enterprises,  I wonder if the traditional BA (Business Analyst) community is also going to join the bandwagon.

Sure, more the merrier one could say: include all Entrerprise Architects and Business Analysts to the Business Architecture Party. But I am tempted to ask: will the REAL Business Architects, who are actually Architecting their Businesses raise their hands please?

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