Attendees:
Chris Eagle
U of Michigan, Enterprise Architect
1.5 years in EA.
In Retail IT management before then

Brenda Reeb -
U of Rochester, Information Architect, reports to the Enterprise Architect
9 months in architecture.  Formerly a librarian with the university.
Working on a university data dictionary (to be a ‘shopping list’)
EA has focused on technical standards - storage, network, and cloud.

Bruce Alexander
Michigan State, Dir. of EA
6 months in architecture. Previously Dir of Enterprise Business Applications
EA in place to prevent ‘re-siloing’ of systems

Caleb Racey
Newcastle (UK)
Comes from technical architecture, and development management before that.
Have a large initiative to combine IT systems

Vinay Varughese
Cornell Medical College
Infrastructure and Operations for 15 years
Starting in technical Arch but planning on all aspects

Wayde Nie (and Laura)
McMaster University
Moving from Technology Arch to Enterprise Arch
Looking to network with other people.

Colleen Nagy
Case Western Reserve
Sr. Director for Strategic Initiatives and Policy, and Portfolio Management
Reorganized to Plan/Build/Run 18 months ago.  In her role since then.

Kasia Azzara
Columbia
Enterprise Architect, for 1 year.
Just getting EA underway since IT was busy with a large ERP implementation
Came from outside HE (Pharmaceutical company)

Russell Connacher
Berkeley
in EA for 9 months.
Been in U/C IT for 20 years
Using TOGAF as a method to give structure to EA

Discussion Notes

Major differences between technical and enterprise arch?
Russ: People get technical standards but don’t get business-level planning
Q: how do you get support
R: “hiding” EA within a SOA implementation

Wayde: Tie EA to a large project?  McMaster is doing Peoplesoft
Kasia: Was able to get some thought into an ERP, but someone limited because project was already underway.
Brenda: implementing Workday, and this may be a sweet spot for EA.   And have a Student System in the wings as well.
Bruce: large projects underway ‘warp out’ planning activities in favor of getting the project installed.
VInay: hitching EA ramp-up onto an ERP project will be problematic, and EA is an afterthought.  At Cornell they’ve had them think about the concepts without actually calling it EA.
Chris: Michigan was able to bake EA into a major IT restructuring.
Brenda: Interesting in what “healthy” looks like.  What makes a good external champion and what are the good projects to bring EA up on.
Q: Who is Rochester’s champion.  A: Not sure they have an external EA champion.
Q: does it help to get connected to a project if you start at the early planning? A: (Bruce) works better for technology than business architecture.
Russ: EA can ride on Governance.  (half of the universities are bringing up Governance along with EA).  Russ: Berkeley has an “hurry up” mentality.
Chris: Michigan Governance has had a lack of ownership by the committees.
Q: why? A: Because it changes how people work together.
Colleen: Lack of funding has been an issue with getting governance in place: Q: you would think that lack of funding would drive governance.  
Caleb: Is governance a pre-req for EA? Brenda: Have made progress through PMO process and gates, not necessarily governance.  Chris: same at Michigan
Wayde: Are there other good insertion points? (Change control board?) A: Initial planning.  Getting data (with limited success, since the project is already underway).  At project failure.
Tools?  Brenda: How to you make the work concrete? Where they go to find your stuff?
TOGAF? A couple of U’s using, but just getting started
Wayde: looking at Enterprise Architect by Spark Systems
Russ: Using Archimate to diagram. Using Archy as well for finding relationships between data and processes.