As the complexity of IT grows, more and more organizations are realizing the need for architecture. But the definition of what architecture is, the titles that architects have, and the role of an architect vary widely from one organization to another. Business, IT, management, and even architects don't necessarily know what a good architect does to add value in his or her organization. This Executive Report by Michael Rosen discusses the role of the architect and describes 10 activities that architects should perform to add value to projects.

Many service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance initiatives become bogged down in a bureaucracy that militates against the very agility that SOA promises in the first place. Is there a way to achieve agile SOA governance, or is this simply an illusion? Fortunately, our experiences show that there are responsive and practical approaches to SOA governance. As with most things in life, balance is the key. In this Executive Update, we consider how to introduce SOA governance in a planned yet incremental fashion, in small chunks, with respect to prioritized business outcomes and risks.

Business architecture is gaining recognition as a game-changing discipline that enables businesses to address major challenges in new and unique ways. Simply put, business architecture allows a business to establish a common vocabulary, shared vision, and a degree of transparency that facilitates initiatives ranging from M&As to the reversal of customer attrition. But even as business architecture success stories emerge, the message has been slow to penetrate the executive suite. This Executive Update, the first in a series, discusses why business leaders should embrace business architecture as a means of addressing complex business challenges in ways that senior leadership can no longer ignore.

In my recent Advisor ("How to Make MDM Go: Start with Architecture"), I discussed the role of enterprise information architecture in Master Data Management (MDM). In this Advisor, I look at the steps to implementing MDM once you have your information architecture in place.

In this Webinar, Mike Rosen, Director of Cutter's Enterprise Architecture practice, first looks at what we mean by collaboration and why we do it. Then, he looks at the impact on traditional business transaction processing when we try to add collaboration. Mike will discuss a detailed example of an extended business transaction and the benefits it can deliver, and finally he'll take a look at the application architecture necessary to integrate Enterprise 2.0 technologies into real business transactions at an enterprise level.