I think the light bulb moment was, I think
it was the third visit to the JISC
EA foundations programme, where it finally
all started making sense. Iíd
been to the first one and weíd done a lot
of ëwhat EA wasí a sort of
overview of what it was, but not really what
it did, and then we did a lot
of action learning about the issues we were
facing and looking at how
EA could help them, but it wasnít really
covering what you did on
Monday morning, which was my big issue, and
thatís what I wanted to
understand, and then after Iíd been to the,
on the course really, it was
really the final one where everything just
started to seem to slot into
place, I started to understand the sort of
strategic concept of enterprise
architecture, what it was trying to achieve
over all for the University but
then I understood the day to day, what you
actually do when youíre
doing enterprise architecture and how that
fits into ICT governance and
why itís there, so I think that was my light
bulb moment for me. So I
think if I was sending anybody else on an
enterprise architecture
course, Iíd have that feeling of ëStick
it out, take everything in, be
confused, ask as many questions as you like
and then eventually youíll
get there and everything will fit in.í And
Iíve kept that attitude now on all
the courses I go on.
The problem I feel Iíve got when I go to
any of these events really is that Iíve only
worked in the HE sector since 2007 and before
that I was a student and before that I was
an ice skater so higher education and the
way itís all run, itís all very new to me
and Iíve learnt an awful lot since I started
the enterprise architecture course because
I really had to take in a lot of information
about how the University works, the strategic
alignment and our governance processes and
our management structures and lots of things
that I didnít really know about because I
never had to know about them, so when I first
went on that enterprise architecture course,
I was still in that sort of feeling of, there
was lots of people there, they tended to be
in a lot more senior positions than I am,
and Iím not that high up within the University.
I recently did a sort of evaluation of my
power and influence and I have very limited
power but am starting to see that Iíve got
a bit more influence and starting to recognize
that, but when I first went to the enterprise
architecture course, I didnít recognize the
level of influence I had, so I was meeting
people who are directors of their ICT services
or who were senior strategic leaders and I
had that sort of feeling of, well, theyíre
in a position where they can actually do something
with enterprise architecture, they can introduce
it and they can almost give people that order
that they must start looking at enterprise
architecture, where I was coming almost from
the bottom up really, where I was trying to
introduce this concept and idea to senior
managers and try to get them to buy into it,
and it just felt when I first arrived, thinking,
ëHow am I going to do this?í when I was
struggling to understand it, I was with all
these senior people and I justÖ All of it
just didnít seem to fit together and then,
as I say, as I went through the course and
I started to see what my role was and how
I could use EA in my role and so I could see
how I could use my role and the work I do
around the JISC project to start influencing
people, and started to recognize that I actually
was maybe quite a valuable person to be doing
EA.
When I first started introducing EA to (sounds
like ëyouth funí? 03:18) I was struggling
to understand how I could start introducing
EA and I looked at doing it on a project basis
but didnít think that was going to work because
you have the ICT principles and information
principles and I felt they needed to come
centrally. But we recognized that we needed
to kind of drip-feed EA in and sow the seed
of interest and it just so happened that one
of the senior managers had questions my line
manager and how all the different University
systems fitted during each student journey,
from when they apply to UCLan or even enquire
to UCLan, to the point where a student graduates,
and at what point do our systems touch those
students, which touch points weíve got and
how we can communicate with them and how these
systems all sit with each other. So it was
an opportunity to try and use (ëArchieí
?04:02) for modeling, and obviously Iíd heard
a lot about it from the cohort that I was
on and the EA practitioner groups that Iíve
been into, and I didnít really fully understand
it so itís a great opportunity for me to
really play with it. And what I was able to
do was model the experience, Iím not necessarily
sure Iíve got it 100% right, but then I was
also (04:23) for the functions of Archie to
show that I could actually embrace that student
journey down into the difference sections
of enquirer, applicant, first year students,
second year students, third year, and alumni,
and start to show during each of those stages
which system that student was touching and
how they link to each other. So thatís now
being taken and used to show senior managers
how the systems are all working and so weíve
been able to model the student experience
in that way and thatís again starting to
introduce enterprise architecture into UCLan.
And when I first mentioned enterprise architecture
at the University, we do EA but a very different
EA; we have people who have mapped our entire
ICT system so they know when a wire falls
out what that wire was connected to and what
systems will be effected etc. So when I first
mentioned bringing EA into projects; they
were extremely reluctant because thatís obviously
an awful lot of work to be doing, and they
didnít want to have that kind of hindrance
on a project. And also, I was quite concerned
about bringing in a whole new methodology.
We use (sounds like ëPrince 2í? 05:25) at
UCLan and we use it quite effectively, particularly
with ICT projects, so bringing in a great,
big change wasnít really going to go down
well when it looked like things were going
quite well as they were with our Prince 2
approach. So just then started talking about
just enough EA so it was about identifying
the qualities of EA that would really help
you at your University and just introducing
them and making it a very light touch. So
I was then able to look at the way that we
do things at UCLan, look at EA, identify the
similarities and start to talk about a light
touch EA that was actually just a few tweaks
and slight changes and just improvements to
the way we do thing rather than bringing in
a great big change that involves lots of work
and lots of people having to develop new skills
and new training and learning and understanding
etc. So that was the way we started to talk
about just enough EA and how we saw it to
be beneficial at UCLan.
