Brian Burke
Research Analyst
5 years at Gartner
25 years IT industry
Brian Burke is an analyst for Gartner, specializing in enterprise architecture and IT portfolio management. His groundbreaking work in the development of federated architectures has been implemented in hundreds of organizations in both... Read Full Bio
by Brian Burke | January 27, 2011 | Comments Off
Gamification is set to become a important trend, impacting many areas of business and society. Gamification can be described as the application of game mechanics to non-game environments. The gamification of social networking and location based services as exemplified by Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR are probably the most recognizable with badges, mayorships and rewards offered for check-ins. Game mechanics has also been applied to engage people, change behaviours and innovate in many different fields including innovation management, health, training, employee performance, and even social issues. But it’s still early days and many people have not yet realized how this trend will affect their organization and their industry. But I think that is going to change.
At Gartner, we’ve been doing a lot of research lately on how gamification is being applied to engage stakeholders, improve performance and drive innovation. We recently highlighted gamification in our CIO New Year’s Resolutions, 2011 as one of the trend-leading technologies that CIOs must get ‘hands-on’ experience with (Note: links to Gartner research are accessible to Gartner clients only). You can find more detailed background research on gamification in the research note Gamification Primer: Life Becomes a Game.
There are a some examples of organizations that are leveraging these techniques to drive innovation from ideation to a business case. In a recently published research note, Case Study: Innovation Squared: The Department for Work and Pensions Turns Innovation Into a Game, we’ve described how the Department for Work and Pensions in the U.K. has leveraged game mechanics to create a market for innovation called IdeaStreet. Leveraging the collective to drive innovation is just one of the many areas that gamification is being applied. Customer loyalty is the primary application that is driving this trend, but there are many other applications that we will explore in our future research.
One such application could be enterprise architecture. I can envision a future where employees, partners and even customers are collaborating to optimize the enterprise architecture using a sophisticated but easy to use enterprise architecture tool. In another recently published research note Play to Win: Crowdsourcing Innovative Future-State EA Models Through Gameplay we explore a future where innovation and enterprise architecture is largely decentralized, and innovative architecture models are crowdsourced using gamified modelling tools. As I’ve been saying for a few years, enterprise architecture is no longer a puzzle, it’s now a game and enterprise architects need to start to think like game designers.
The gamification of innovation and enterprise architecture is a natural extension of design thinking as it is a human-centric and engaging means of harnessing the power of the collective to drive innovation and change. I believe that game mechanics are going to have a huge impact on the way organizations engage stakeholders, innovate and evolve, and we are just now on the leading edge of that trend. More to come!
Category: Gamification Tags: EA, Innovation
by Brian Burke | May 19, 2010 | Comments Off
We closed out another great EA Summit in London yesterday! Dave Aron delivered an insightful talk on how to leverage business model analogies to bring some new ideas to the business strategy planning table.
And to wrap it up, Andy Kyte discussed how to overhaul a bloated application portfolio and of course applied all of his talents for delivering great research in a very entertaining way.
I had a meeting with a delegate today who told me that they have been asked to cut their IT budget by 40%. I thought the worst was over in this downturn!
First ash clouds threatened our delegate’s arrival and now a strike by British Airways crew threatens their departure – I hope our delegates get home without too much disruption today. Thanks to all of our delegates and sponsors for coming to the Summit and making this a great event.
We will be back next year with the EA Summit 2011 on the 9th – 10th May at the Park Plaza hotel in London. I’m looking forward to seeing you there!
Category: EA EA Summit Tags:
by Brian Burke | May 17, 2010 | Comments Off
We’ve had a great kick-off today to the EA Summit in London. Nick Gall presented on Hybrid Thinking and how to apply this approach to build up solutions rather than decompose problems. This is an entirely new way of looking at enterprise architecture and will be a major focus of our research in the future. Later in the morning, Chris Wilson did a sort of flashcard quiz with the Summit sponsors which was both entertaining and informative. I think the audience loved it.
René Doursat from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris delivered an insightful presentation on EA and Self-Organization that compared IT with self-organizing biological systems. My favorite quote was to ‘organize bottom up not belly up.’
Check out some photos of the event here http://bit.ly/atfbVB
I met up with some of the EA tool vendors on the solution showcase floor and had several interesting discussions on the future of EA tools. The consensus was that tools are moving up the food chain to become more adept at planning business driven change.
Category: EA EA Summit Tags:
by Brian Burke | May 17, 2010 | Comments Off
Despite threats from the ash cloud, we’ve arrived and successfully kick-off the EA Summit in London this morning. We’ve got a tremendous agenda lined up that I’m sure people will find the conference enlightening. I’m especially looking forward to meeting with conference delegates, vendors and colleagues over the next couple of days at the EA Summit. A couple of reminders for people at the Summit
- Tweet your thoughts about the Summit on Twittter, using the hashtag #GartnerEA
- We would appreciate it if you can take a few minutes to complete the survey at the Gartner Real Time Research centre
- If you’ve tried to register for a roundtable session and found it fully booked, please check back before the session as there are always a few no-shows and we may be able to allow additional participants at the beginning of the session.
Most of all, have a great time!
Category: EA EA Summit Tags:
by Brian Burke | April 17, 2010 | Comments Off
We’ve just wrapped up the EA Summit in Las Vegas and it seems to have been a very positive experience for everyone. The Gartner analysts and our case study speakers were very happy with the level of sophistication of the audience – great questions, comments and challenges. Many attendees had positive comments on both the leading edge research that was presented on hybrid thinking, hyperconnected enterprises and pattern based strategy. The sessions that seemed to be most in demand were those that focused on practical and straightforward advice on how to be successful in EA, both from Gartner and from real world practitioners. The Open Research Meeting at the close was lively and controversial as always.
I understand that some of the attendees made a donation at the casino last night, and a few looked a little tired at the 7:30am sessions this morning. The only other downside to the Summit is that several of our European based clients and analysts will have a few extra days in Vegas before flights resume to Europe. But – is that really so terrible? As for me, I’m looking forward to spending a couple of days winding down in Vancouver before I go back to Barcelona.
There’s only a few weeks left until the EA Summit in London, which promises to be as great as the Vegas version. I’m really looking forward hearing René Doursat talk about Architecture and Self-Organization. The rapid fire sessions and workshops will add a new twist to the London edition as well. I hope to see you there!
Category: EA EA Summit Tags:
by Brian Burke | April 16, 2010 | 1 Comment
Day two was jam packed with content from both Gartner analysts and case studies. I personally led a round table session on innovation with a group of about ten people which led to some amazing insights, the most interesting was a discussion on how to build a passion for innovation in an organization. Andy Kyte delivered a brilliant talk on Applications Overhaul. As always, Andy provides enlightening ideas in a very entertaining way. My favorite quote from Andy, “Applications are dogs not puppies”.
Philip Allega introduced Gartner’s IT Market Clock – a new tool for looking at technology lifecycles. I loved the part where he describes airline architects as, people who want to define the architecture based on articles found in airline magazines.
Jeff Gibson delivered an insightful presentation on team dynamics, and JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist from BT talked about design from a business perspective. Check out other comments on Twitter hashtag #GartnerEA.
Category: EA EA Summit Tags:
by Brian Burke | April 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
The EA Summit in Vegas kicked off yesterday with a great presentation from Gartner analyst Nick Gall who introduced Hybrid Thinking. Nick posits that enterprise architects need a new paradigm to deal with wicked problems and has taken some of the best ideas from the Design Thinking approach and applied them to EA.
Several tweeters commented that Gartner’s EA definition should be able to fit into a tweet – and I think they are on to something. I’ll introduce that challenge to Gartner’s EA research community.
Gary Hamel delivered a great talk on innovation and how companies will need to decentralize authority and build from the bottom up. One tweeter remarked their favorite quote from Gary Hamel’s talk was “When you get back to work tell your boss your company has a love deficit.”
Overall the buzz was great, the solution showcase floor was packed for the evening reception and even the food at lunch was pretty good! I’m looking forward to day two – starting in about 30 minutes! Follow the commentary on Twitter – hashtag #GartnerEA.
Category: EA EA Summit Tags:
by Brian Burke | April 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
In an open letter blog to President Obama, Burton Group Senior Analyst Joe Bugajski opines that President Obama is spewing “delusional visions of a nation-covering, interoperable, secure, private, reliable, accurate, and instantaneous electronic healthcare data network is at best terrifying and at worst pernicious.” OK – I had to look up ‘pernicious’. It’s not good.
Mr. Bugajski goes on to relate a horrifying personal experience in which he ended up in a clinic and then a hospital that both used electronic health records. He relates the story of his stay in which electronic health records hindered rather than helped and concludes that most health care professionals “longed for handwritten charts hanging at the foot of every patient’s bed.” While I don’t doubt his experience, and I disagree that building a national health information network is an unsound idea. In fact, the National Health Services (NHS) in the UK is several years into its ‘Connecting for Health‘ program and has already built a nation-covering, interoperable, secure, private, reliable, accurate, and instantaneous electronic healthcare data network. The UK is reaping the benefits of improved treatment and cost savings. You can read additional background in my research note, Toolkit: Enterprise Architecture for the U.K.’s National Health Service (Case Study)
Mr. Bugajski is correct that the initiative will be large and costly and I also agree that the US government should approach the program with caution. But the benefits are enormous – it’s about saving lives! While I sympathize with Mr. Bugajski’s unfortunate experience, I believe moving forward on this initiative is truly one of the bright spots in President Obama’s stimulus plan.
Category: EA NHS Tags: Barack Obama, Electronic Patient Records
by Brian Burke | March 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
This may be most entertaining CV I’ve ever read. To be completely honest, it’s the first CV that I’ve read top to bottom in decades. Noah bills himself as a “Front-end Developer and Other Crap”. When you stop laughing and dig a little deeper, Noah is not only telling the reader that he’s pretty good at his job (all CVs say that), he’s also putting prospective employers on notice. He’s telling you that he’s not going to fit in to your company, but if your company fits him then he may work there.
Noah is a great example of a ‘Digital Native’. He is clearly not a younger version of us. We need to rethink how we are going to attract and retain the best and brightest of Noah’s generation. As Noah puts it, “The motherfuton SUN will be jealous of the heat I add to your site.”
Good luck in your job search Noah!
Category: Digital Natives Tags: Digital Natives, Noah Stokes
by Brian Burke | March 19, 2009 | 2 Comments
Yesterday we finished up the EA Foundation Seminar in Barcelona and it was an interesting event. Some of my observations:
- Lots of companies are getting EA new programs off the ground – but perhaps not as many as in the past few years. This is likely a direct response to the economic crisis.
- Open Source EA tools are more likely to gain acceptance. During a discussion about the recently announced Essential Architecture Manager seminar attendees expressed a lot of support for open source EA tools. Sarah Smith from Enterprise Architecture Solutions reports in her blog that 200 people have downloaded the tool already.
- Do Chief Architects ‘own’ EA decisions? We had an interesting debate on this topic. For example, when making a decision on a software standard what is the role of the Chief Architect? On one side, the argument is that Chief Architects should take a position and defend it. On the other side, the argument that the Chief Architect merely facilitates the decision making process for the stakeholders – they have no personal stake in the results.
- A surprisingly small number of companies represented at the seminar had appointed process owners, and very few had ‘one company’ initiatives to integrate or harmonize business processes across lines of business. This is not consistent with my day-to-day experience – maybe it was just the mix of companies represented or perhaps a trend.
- Business architecture is becoming solidly embedded within the scope of most enterprise architecture programs however the reporting relationship remains unclear – should business architecture report into IT or the business. The trend appears to be more business architecture teams have business side reporting relationships.
If you missed this EA Foundation Seminar, be sure to sign up for the next European EA Foundation Seminar in Amsterdam on June 16 &17.
Category: EA EA Foundation Seminar Tags: EA, EA Foundation Seminar, Essential Architecture Manager
