A Counting Frame for Applications | Real IRM

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A Counting Frame for Applications

Thursday, 5 September, 2013
SABMiller introduced Avolution’s ABACUS as a tool in support of enterprise architecture 13 months ago. The architecture practice in the South African business however is still in its infancy. This paper discusses some of the experiences in maturing this practice. We look at the extent to which ABACUS has aided our learning and development, and conversely, the extent to which our (im)maturity allows elementary use of ABACUS. Beyond simply the tooling, the paper also describes the challenge a frugal IT shop poses on enterprise architecture and how it shapes our capability building – the people, process and content - needed to deliver a service relevant to the bottom-line. In particular, the challenges found in accounting for applications (existing, new and old) will be shared together with some cartoon architectures used to paint a picture of a shifting landscape.

SABMiller introduced Avolution’s ABACUS as a tool in support of enterprise architecture 13 months ago. The architecture practice in the South African business however is still in its infancy.

This paper discusses some of the experiences in maturing this practice. We look at the extent to which ABACUS has aided our learning and development, and conversely, the extent to which our (im)maturity allows elementary use of ABACUS. Beyond simply the tooling, the paper also describes the challenge a frugal IT shop poses on enterprise architecture and how it shapes our capability building – the people, process and content - needed to deliver a service relevant to the bottom-line. In particular, the challenges found in accounting for applications (existing, new and old) will be shared together with some cartoon architectures used to paint a picture of a shifting landscape.