As I noted in October, my rate of blogging has dropped noticeably, from 34 posts in 2016 to a mere 7 last year. I don't really adopt new year's resolutions but as a goal for this year, I would like to wrote more posts. I like to keep this blog both as a means for letting colleagues know what we're working on, and as an area of reflection for myself.
The two main obstacles to writing more stem from the same source: the University has a large number of initiatives under way and we are trying to support them with a architecture team of just three people. So on the one hand, we have a lot of other demands on our time aside from writing for this blog, while on the the other hand the initatives are large and ongoing, which makes them hard to summarise in succinct posts.
Yet to make our architecture work yield its best effect, we have to write, and talk, and communicate widely. And, to be fair, we do this: via board reports, presentations, one-to-one meetings, strategy documents, models, and project teams. I believe our work is valued, but how do we embed it further, so that a wider group of people are helping to build on the foundations we have put in place?
This was the key lesson I brought home from the EDUCAUSE ITANA workshop in November. To maximise the take-up of an architecture-led approach, we need to train more people in some of the skills and tools that we use. So, we need to spend even more time on comms, backed up with hands-on training for key members of staff who are well-placed and motivated to join our endeavour. And before we can do that, we have to make sure that the work we have done so far is adequatedly documented, so that our colleagues can find the information they need.
This isn't likely to give me more free time for writing here on my blog. Nonetheless, I will try to make time to write about some of the work we have going on, and indeed about interesting projects elsewhere. I hope that colleagues will find these posts form an interesting supplement to the more formal channels at work, and that other readers will also find nuggets to interest them as well.
The two main obstacles to writing more stem from the same source: the University has a large number of initiatives under way and we are trying to support them with a architecture team of just three people. So on the one hand, we have a lot of other demands on our time aside from writing for this blog, while on the the other hand the initatives are large and ongoing, which makes them hard to summarise in succinct posts.
Yet to make our architecture work yield its best effect, we have to write, and talk, and communicate widely. And, to be fair, we do this: via board reports, presentations, one-to-one meetings, strategy documents, models, and project teams. I believe our work is valued, but how do we embed it further, so that a wider group of people are helping to build on the foundations we have put in place?
This was the key lesson I brought home from the EDUCAUSE ITANA workshop in November. To maximise the take-up of an architecture-led approach, we need to train more people in some of the skills and tools that we use. So, we need to spend even more time on comms, backed up with hands-on training for key members of staff who are well-placed and motivated to join our endeavour. And before we can do that, we have to make sure that the work we have done so far is adequatedly documented, so that our colleagues can find the information they need.
This isn't likely to give me more free time for writing here on my blog. Nonetheless, I will try to make time to write about some of the work we have going on, and indeed about interesting projects elsewhere. I hope that colleagues will find these posts form an interesting supplement to the more formal channels at work, and that other readers will also find nuggets to interest them as well.
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