What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

Developing an EA strategy is not done very often, but has many benefits. In this episode we are talking with Carlisle Gunn, an experienced Enterprise Architect, who we've worked with on past projects. Carlisle has worked in the Enterprise Architecture space for over 8 years with a focus on business and application architecture. He led teams through process discovery into documentation and improvement. Working with team members from a wide array of roles, his background demonstrates experience working with almost every type of functional member within an organization. Carlisle received a Masters of Professional Studies in Enterprise Architecture in 2016, where his focus was on the establishment of Enterprise Architecture capabilities and usage of modeling languages. We are talking about the following topics: Carlisle’s background (and some rugby geekery) EA strategies and that they need to be client-specific Stakeholders and the Enterprise Architect view (top-down) vs. the Solution Architect perspective (bottom-up) ARB /= implemented EA strategy Components of an EA strategy Start with maturity assessment > identify low-hanging fruit Communication is part of the “how”; EA strategy is the “what” EA goals and how to measure EA KPIs EA capabilities and services Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode14.

Welcome to the first episode of our season 2! Today we are talking about the Solution Lifecycle in architecture - what it is and why it is important to you. Architecture development and analysis does not happen in a vacuum, but are embedded in a lifecycle. New tools like Process Mining and Task Mining make it sound as if you don’t need other tools and techniques anymore, but quite the opposite is the case - traditional analysis techniques are still needed to support all phases of the solution lifecycle. We are talking about: What is a "solution" and what are the layers and phases of the lifecycle (see also graphic below)? Give examples of two analysis types and when to use which one best: Simulation and Process Mining The value of this iterative approach and the cautions The iterative nature of it and the impact on developing your overall architecture approach Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode13.

Thank you so much for supporting and growing this podcast over our first 6 months. In Season 1, we covered foundational topics like how to implement an architecture tool and dipped our toes into interviews with thought leaders in the architecture and process management field. And now, welcome to season 2 of the What's Your Baseline podcast, where we take it to the next level! My name is Roland Woldt. And I’m J-M Erlendson. This season, we’re going to cover three areas relevant to architects and driven by best practices. Our first topic expands on the practice itself, crafting an EA strategy and leveraging the solution lifecycle. The second area is all about growing your practice, personally, and for your organization: for instance, how to work with recruiters or analysts. We’ve lined up fantastic guests from industry-leading companies. And lastly, we’ll dig deeper into data-driven analysis, decision making, and automation - further connecting process mining, RPA, task mining, and AI with some of our favorite thought leaders’ perspectives mixed in. Join us on this bi-weekly journey with the What’s Your Baseline podcast.

Here it is - the end (of season 1 ... no worries, we're back in January 2022). In this episode we are mixing up the format a bit and are talking about the 10 things that we learned in 25 years of  architecture and process management. Approach / strategy segment Let's talk about the bigger picture, the why and larger setup. What are the thoughts that get organizations started? Why: You’ll end up paying for it somehow. End of the line in people or risk. Don't do a "big effort upfront" Develop and create in releases / have a release plan Processes and architectures need to be measured Organizational segment Architectures win and fail with the people. If they don't want to cooperate or be involved you will fail. It's the people, stupid Do not separate areas of your architecture into different groups Risk & Controls folks are your friends "How-to" segment Once you get started the task of developing an architecture seems daunting. This segment has a few tips to make it more manageable. Start small but don't settle on the lowest denominator - choose a tool and have a minimum set of artifact requirements Have the full lifecycle in mind and don't get distracted by the latest tech When developing models do this in multiple iterations (esp. processes) Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode12.

Ahh, "governance" - the topic that is boring to death and had complete EA groups being fired. Love it or not, setting up the "rules of engagement" is still an important piece in an organization. And you can do it while having some fun when you remember the points that we are talking about in this episode: Role of governance in architecture activities and how it was seen in the past Archetypes of architects - governance as low/low activity (and hence the popularity of EA groups to focus on this topic) Who should be involved when setting up the rules of engagement Governance automation and how to implement it How to design governance processes - push/pull communication, elements of the implementation, measure gov. KPIs Organizational design for governance - three branches of governance (legislation / standards group; jurisdiction / ARB; executives / CoE), centralized / decentralized governance setups Additional aspects: enablement, project tracking, workload balancing, content freshness, confirmation management, dashboards / hold participants accountable / workflow routing / visibility Two client project examples Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode11.

Have you ever wondered why you should go to conferences or be a speaker (and how to become one)? Our podcast guest today is José Pires, a veteran of 20+ years in the conference business and a leader in helping organizations to improve their execution and innovation excellence. José serves as Excellence & Innovation (E&I) executive leader and advisor for cross-industry organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 50, where he oversees the global identification, prioritization and execution of high value business improvements and innovations for the companies, business partners, and customers in multiple markets. He is an advisory board leader, keynote speaker, and chairman for  organizations and global conferences on innovation, operational excellence, leadership development, strategy execution, culture, business and digital transformation, customer experience, exponential technologies, and growth acceleration. He is an executive Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt who holds a Bachelor in Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas and a Master in Business Administration focused on Investment Banking and Entrepreneurship from the University of San Diego. In this episode we spoke about the following topics: Jose's background and how he came into the speaking/conference business as an introvert engineer The fear of public speaking and how to overcome it Getting good at your craft (your purpose?) and learn to communicate about it The change in the conference landscape due to the pandemic (disruption vs. dislocation) The objectives of participating in a conference or alternatives: learning, inspiration, networking Criteria of good conferences (virtual and in-person) How to get started to become a speaker Conferences as businesses What to look for when planning for attending events The "Three Rs": relationship, results, and reputation Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode10.

This episode is a "semi follow-up" to the last episode, where we talked about Process Mining - today's topic is Task Mining (aka Robotics Process Discovery). Task Mining will bring clarity into what your users do on a procedure level, and can give insights into what might cause a "spike" in your analysis, or fill the holes that you might have in a discovered / mined process (for example when there are manual steps or steps in a system that does not create a log file). In this episode we spoke about the following topics: What is task mining (vs. process mining)? What is the information that one gets from task mining? How to handle procedure-level in models The "Big Brother" fear that comes with task mining, and how this is mitigated Benefits of task mining Steps to a useful application of task mining (how to get to a good analysis) Hybridized setup of process and task mining - 5 steps to follow Velocity and throughput analysis (frequencies and times) as a way to identify improvement and (RPA) automation opportunities What/if analysis in a process/task mining tool vs. (proper) simulation in an architecture tool Technical integration of task and process mining tools; benefits of using BPMN in mining scenarios Experiences from a client project Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode9.

Another Monday, another interview :-) Our guest today is Dr. Julian Krumeich, Software AG's product manager for their process mining tool. In his current role as Director Product Management ARIS at Software AG, Julian helps customers achieve operational excellence by shaping the future of our ARIS Process Mining solution - the ideal tool for integrated process mining with business process management. The close collaboration with key customers, global market analysts and his spirit of innovation enable him to define and implement the right product strategy to ensure customer success and contribute to the profitability of our company. Before joining Software AG, Julian worked for the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH) as a researcher and project manager on innovative projects that combine AI and BPM. In this area, he had several speaking engagements worldwide, published research papers in high-ranking scientific journals and completed his doctorate (PhD) summa cum laude. We are talking about the following topics: Get to know Julian What a product manager does What is process mining and how is it different than other process improvement methodologies History of process mining tools and how things changed from experts to business users Future of process mining tools (omnipresence) Key features to look out for when looking for a process mining tool Why Software AG’s Process Mining is different than the competition Julian can be reached via LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliankrumeich, and if you like to give us a follow there, we can found at https://www.linkedin.com/company/whatsyourbaseline. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode8.

Welcome to a new episode of your favorite podcast. The topic of today is to capture and import the vast amounts of existing content in your organization, and how to integrate this into your repository. The import is one of the four major steps of an architecture tool implementation that we discussed in Episode 3. Why bringing in existing content? Concerns: age of content, correctness, type of storage (project vs. Enterprise Baseline), integration into dev method/SDLC, document naming/versioning Size of import: number of models and complexity drive effort Content format: how to map the information to models, objects, attributes Create catalog of to-be-imported content (> Notion) Five phases of import: preparation, initial import, create new model, normalization, quality assurance Preparation: catalog, database setup, filter/permission considerations, tool mapping (Visio), tracking and reporting Initial import: detailed look at what to import; automatically or manually import, use catalog for tracking, issues when importing Create new models: BPMN Collaboration example, merge between different databases Normalization: where does content go into structure (subprocesses, catalog models, etc.), object consolidation, adapting models to "correct" layout/standards (such as object naming) QA: modeler QA vs. central QA, semantic checks, macros, automated workflows; release and publish, communication Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode7.

In this episode of the What's Your Baseline podcast we are changing up the format a bit - this is the first of many interviews that we will have in the future. Our guest today is Mike Idengren, who has 20+ years of experience combining EA, BPM, and agile solution development methodologies to unleash cross-functional teams' potential to deliver on digital business transformation expectations. He is a TOGAF-certified SAFe SPC and instructor, applying "agile at scale" -- going beyond theoretical teaching, and delivering results by implementing "just enough" tools, organizational structures, and processes. We are talking about the following topics: - Mike's background and how he got into Agile - (Scaled) Agile as a discipline and its "big goal" - The layers of Scaled Agile and the roles that architects play in each layer - The value context: improving product quality, lowering risk together, and improving sustainability.  - How to implement Scaled Agile: leadership, start small, scale - Doing Agile in a remote environment (vs. traditional "team is in the room" approach); which tools to use and which type of (consulting) resources to bring on board - Governance and the LACE (Lean Agile Center of Excellence) - Mike's patent-pending "Lean Agile Blocker Index" concept - Lean Scaled Architect's offerings Mike can be reached by sending a note to mike@leanscaledarchitects.com and you can learn more about his firm at www.leanscaledarchitects.com. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here. The  full show notes, including graphics, further links, credits, and transcript, are available at whatsyourbaseline.com/episode6.