Site Guide
The content in the guide is grouped according to main topic:
Capabilities —
Collaboration —
Development —
State of Affairs —
Services.
Each article is marked with one or more icons, showing the type of information the article contains.
Our website is a work in progress. Each article is also marked with an icon showing how far we are with writing it. Articles marked as “Completed” are still open for review.
Legend I
Information: what it is, background, definitions
Importance: why it is important, relevance, the role it plays in performance
Analysis
Development: how to develop, what it means to develop
Legend II
Planned
Draft (outline) phase
More coming
Complete
Capabilities
An introduction to the many (conflicting) capabilities required of good architects.
What is an Architect?
A personal perception of the knowledge, skills and capabilities an IT architect needs throughout the design process from first contact to implementation.
Professional Capabilities
The various IT-related, technical and modeling necessary areas of knowledge, and the role of experience in developing professional architecture capabilities.
Business Capabilities
An introduction to the various business-related areas of knowledge and capability an architect needs to be adept in.
Business Knowledge
An outline of the business-related knowledge necessary to understand the business on a level that enables the creation of relevant architectures.
Systems Dynamics & Systems Thinking
A description of Systems Dynamics and Systems Thinking as disciplines and how they support the understanding of relations, feedback-loops and non-local effects in omplicated (organisational) systems.
Complexity
The difference between complicated and complex; complexity and predictability; approaches in complex domains.
Personal Capabilities & Personality
An introduction to the personal capabilities that determine how successful an architect can be.
‘Character traits’: are they ‘personality’ or capabilities and what that means for the ability to improve.
Cognitive Capabilities
A list of the cognitive capabilities associated with successful architects.
Emotional Intelligence
The role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in high-performance: EI model; EI competencies; the tipping-point for professional success in complex professions; improving EI.
Emotional Competencies
A list of the EI competencies detailing the behaviours an EI competent person consistently demonstrates.
Emergent Intelligence
The ‘thinking’ process in the brain responsible for creative, visionary, innovative thinking and sense-making.
Leadership & Communication
The relevance of leadership and communication capabilities to the architecture professional.
Personality Types
The value and danger in personality profiling as an individual and team development tool.
Research
A collection of research around the characteristics and capabilities of (Enterprise, IT, Systems) architects.
Collaboration
Definitions of collaboration; the importance of collaboration in modern business environments; conversation as a core business process; collaborative business environments; collaborative conversational processes; outcomes of collaboration.
Dialogue
Dialogue as a conversational process; business applications and outcomes; Dialogue World Café.
Why Dialogue Works
Observations regarding the strength and effects of Dialogue. Keywords are: knowledge sharing; innovation; sense-making; systemic view; collective intelligence; creativity; inspiration; self-organising action.
Education & Training of Architects
A review of the three areas architects need to develop capabilities in (professional, business and personal), explaining needs, and identifying availability and gaps.
Training IT Architects: Special Considerations
A call for customising business and personal capabilities development specifically for architects and an explanation for the need for such customisation.
Developing Capabilities
The different stages of the learning process that turns theoretical knowledge into active capabilities.
Neuroscience of Learning & Change
The three ‘thinking’ processes in the brain; effective learning and training strategies engaging these processes.
Brainwaves, Creativity & Top-perfomance
The electrical activity in the brain and their related states of wakefulness. The Alpha frequency and its relation to creativity, stress-reduction and top-performance.
Personal Mastery
The development of personal mastery as an architecture practice. Keywords: envisioning; requirement acquisition; migration; legacy-systems; implementation.
Mental Models & Perception
The internal maps of the world we carry in our heads and the mental filters that determine (and limit) what we perceive of the world and how we act and react to those perceptions.
Developing Emotional Intelligence
Developing Emotional Intelligence as a process of learning new behaviours, compared to acquiring new skills in sports; the importance of awareness in the learning process; the move from awareness to competence; the importance of choice and motivation.
Developing Emergent Intelligence
Although Emergent Intelligence cannot be trained directly, the capability can be greatly enhanced through training of the many factors influencing it.
Leadership Development
Effective learning strategies for developing leadership competencies; variables linked to successful leadership development; effective design for leadership development programs.
Alpha Training
Some information around training the brain to move into and sustain Alpha wave patterns and the benefit of such practice.
Centring
Some information about the practice of centring and the benefits it produces.
Architecture Professionalism: Standards, Certification & Education
This white paper (published August 2008) portrays the state of standardisation of the architecture profession, including:
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Role definitions and relevant types of certifications.
Standardised certification: knowledge and capabilities.
EA experience-based certification: certifying bodies, levels, requirements, procedures, requirements validation, availability in Australia. EA education-based certification.
Education and development: professional-technical capabilities, business capabilities, personal capabilities.
Discussion and conclusions.
Where IT Projects Fail
The complexities inherent in large-scale IT projects including the business domains, multiple stakeholders, change.
The high failure rate of IT projects.
The domain of project management methodologies.
Issues of predictability, planning, control and risk management in projects.
Appropriate strategies for negotiating complexity.
Our Services
The design principles of the Transgrowth services and a condensed list of the offering.
Services Legend
Providing information and insight
Using collaborative processes
Doing actual work on the project at hand
Training skills and developing capabilities
Enterprise Architects Certification
An awareness seminar for architects, IT professionals, managers and anyone interested in how to verify credentials of architects and how to support their development.
The seminar focuses on standards, accreditation and certification of architects, as well as available options for education and training.
The Future of Enterprise Architecture
An awareness seminar for architects and their managers, CIOs and CEOs and anyone with a vested interest in strategic thinking and integrated deployment of IT into the business.
The seminar focuses on positioning IT, following business models for competitive advantage and the role EA within that context: past, present and future.
IT Projects: Between Methodology and Success
An awareness seminar for architects involved in IT projects, (IT) project managers and business managers of businesses engaging in (large-scale) IT projects.
The seminar focuses on the many factors influencing the progress, well-being and success of (large-scale) IT projects
and provides insight into strategies for improving the probability of success.
Kick-Off Planning for IT Projects
An interactive seminar bringing together the stakeholders and parties involved in a (large-scale) IT project.
The seminar provides insight into the systemic problems inherent in large-scale IT projects and engages participants in a collaborative process promoting strategic alignment, coordination and trust.
Project Booster: Aligning for Success
A highly interactive and collaborative workshop bringing together the key business owners of a project and the project delivery team.
The workshop provides insight into the systemic problems inherent in large-scale IT projects and engages participants in various collaborative processes ensuring (strategic) alignment, coordination and trust. These processes enhance the levels of involvement and motivation of the participants and produce commonality between the parties involved in the understanding of, expectations, safe-guards, issues and success criteria for the project.
Setting the Stage
An intensive, highly-interactive workshop, bringing together executives and architecture stakeholders.
Using a variety of collaborative thinking, conversing and brainstorming methods, the workshops produces high-level strategic business definitions of the technology requirements of the organisation which can then be used as a blueprint for technology architecture in service of business objectives, guiding any future technology initiatives and developments.
Collaborative Stakeholder Engagement
A highly interactive workshop, bringing together — depending on timing and circumstances — different business and architecture stakeholder groups at various critical junctures of architecture initiatives and lifecycles.
Using a variety of collaborative technologies, the workshops provide a mechanism for creating commonality and alignment of understanding of goals, priorities, responsibilities and actions, for a greater responsiveness to change and for early detection and adjustment of potentially negative trends.
Architects Development Programs
Development programs that promote professionalism and high-performance of architects, enhancing their ability to add value to the enterprises they work for by creating highly relevant architectures.
These programs focus on the non-technical knowledge and capabilities, providing leading-edge business knowledge, the development of personal capabilities (including Emotional Intelligence) and the integration of these into the professional architecture context.