← INTERSECTION16 Conference Copenhagen, June 9-10, 2016

Len Fehskens

Master Class

Enterprise Architecture and Design

Thursday, June 9
11:00 – 13:15
Master Class Room

Len Fehskens
Chief Editor, Journal of Enterprise Architecture


New ideas about the role of design and architecture in the enterprise context abound. As we develop and adopt these ideas we have to be careful that we don’t fall into the keystone trap – the belief that if we could just get one particular thing right, everything else would fall into place, if only we knew what that one particular thing (the keystone) was. It is far more likely that the success of ambitious endeavors requires that we get many things right. This talk explores the implications of this assumption, proposing a succession of 32 basic ideas starting from first principles and elaborating their consequences. Along the way, it develops a concept of architecture as a particular kind of design, and how this concept of architecture can be used to identify and characterize everything that is necessary for an endeavor to be successful. Throughout this elaboration, it takes explicit account of the fact that designing is an activity undertaken by people, and that the endeavor under consideration is also an activity undertaken by people.