for J. William Bennett

William Wrigley, Jr. (1861-1932) once said "When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."  Without experiential deliberation there can be no change. Without change there can be no progress.  Doing something "the way its always been done" or finding no fault in a faulty process, is as common today as it was in Wrigley's day. Not addressing such issues can render your business unnecessary.

Professional Experiential  Portfolio

for

J. William Bennett

DHS eMerge² Project

In the second half of 2004 I was engaged by SAICs Center for Enterprise Architecture in Washington, DC, to assist on one of the many Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiatives. 

The DHS, as you may already know, is a combination of 22 federal agencies and bureaus.  The consolidation of IT and specifically the financial systems relating to the 22 agencies is of the highest priority.  The eMerge² project was the initiative to consolidate these financial systems under the DHS CFO.  My experience in consolidation implementation was needed to help connect the conceptual architecture models to actual implementation issues. 

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is one of today's leading application design and development methodologies. It is not radically different than systems architecture disciplines of past decades. The key to modern EA is the application of a framework [Darwin; Zachman, 2004].  This framework provides discrete architecture requirements collection and analysis based on the character of the requirement. The basic characterizations are: What, How, Where, Who, When and Why. These categories of requirements are divested, respectively, into, Data, Function, Network, People, Time and Motivation. The framework assists the architect in managing the category and level of requirement definition.

The entire DHS consolidation target model for IT is being developed using EA methodology and the Zachman framework.  The eMerge² project on which I worked, is the first to attempt to take the EA framework forward into implementation in the DHS.

Details of my contribution are confidential for security reasons, however, the project executive with SAIC has provided a Letter of Recommendation.

FEMA PMO

Another DHS project included developing the Program Management Office (PMO) intranet web site for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Acting in dual roles as web services developer and PMP, I developed this web portal for the FEMA Office of the CIO. The portal included training, case studies, PM methodologies, and PMBOK tools and templates for effective project management and collaboration. The project included Flash, XHTML, CSS navigation, Javascripts, CGI and federal 508 accessibility compliance.

References:

EA Certification guides, Retrieved form http://www.enterprise-architecture.info/EA_Certification.htm, October, 2004, [Certification, 2004]

The Zachman EA Framework, Retrieved from http://www.zifa.com/framework.html, October, 2004 [Zachman, 2004]

Further Reading on EA:

http://www.eacommunity.com/

http://www.agiledata.org/essays/enterpriseArchitecture.html

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