5 Comments
User's avatar
Robert Mckee's avatar

Hi Tom,

Point solutions have in many ways over the years added to a proliferation of specialised personnel increasing the cost of product support in many cases and in extreme cases pricing organizations out of a given market. I do take your point on many companies existing on point solutions at present and without executive support for change initiatives is destined to remain for the foreseeable future.

Expand full comment
Tom Graves's avatar

Yeah, exactly, Robert. I do try to avoid any direct focus on enterprise-architecture in Small Changes - it's supposed to be separate from my 'day-job', after all! :-) - but this is one area where there's a direct overlap. And, of course, one that scales out to industries, standards, sociopolitical-philosophies or even whole countries as variants on the same theme of 'point-solution'. If we want to tackle the big-picture issues, the problems that can arise from misplaced point-solutions are very much concerns that we'll need to address.

Expand full comment
Robert Mckee's avatar

The problem that we face is that IT solution in is being addressed by choosing a new shiny toy and try to fit it to organizational requirements rather than look to the requirements and apply the best technological solution.

Expand full comment
Tom Graves's avatar

"Here's my solution - how can I force your question to fit it?" Yeah, that kind of thing.

Again, I'm trying to keep the classic 'enterprise'-architecture arguments out of Small Changes, because I'm aiming to tackle a much larger scope and scale here, but yeah, TOGAF ADM Phase H (up to v9, anyway) not only exactly fits your point about 'selling shiny-toys', but indeed is evidently designed for exactly that purpose. Sigh...

Expand full comment
Tom Graves's avatar

(Or "_seems to be_ designed for exactly that purpose", anyway...)

Expand full comment