Helen Ciric, President of SEG Consulting (a Comtrade360 partner) June 17, 2024 Salesforce is considered the first fully functional cloud-based CRM platform in the market. Customers typically jump on the Salesforce bandwagon to manage their marketing campaigns, customer service, sales, and more. By configuring and customizing the Salesforce platform, customers…

Helen Ciric, President of SEG Consulting (a Comtrade360 partner) May 20, 2024 In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, organizations are increasingly turning to DevOps practices to enhance their software development and delivery capabilities. Comtrade360, a leading name in the DevOps space, offers a comprehensive suite of tools, features, and processes designed…

Helen Ciric, President of SEG Consulting (a Comtrade360 partner) April 12, 2024 In the dynamic world of technology, staying ahead of the curve is not just a choice; it’s a necessity. Businesses, both big and small, are on the lookout for innovative solutions that not only streamline their operations but…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects March 28, 2024 When it comes to the discipline of life and improving our lives, we need a Life Architecture methodology to achieve a desired life.  Life Architecture must be governed by a set of guidelines, practices, principles, concepts, conventions, assumptions, and rules –…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects May 25, 2021 On March 30, 2010, someone tried to sell 10,000 bitcoins for $50.  The highest bid was only $20 and no one bought them.  By April 2021, those coins were worth half a billion dollars, give or take.  That got me thinking. …

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects January 26, 2021 When I think of intelligence, I think of the CIA – short for the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA gathers, processes, and analyzes national security information in order to protect the US from danger such as terrorism and military attacks. The…

Marcus Udokang, IT Consultant December 29, 2020   Some fear the role of the Project Manager may be eliminated as the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in the workplace. Others see the evolution of AI as creating new opportunities, allowing the Project Manager to transform their role…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager November 16, 2020 Today’s organizations are faced with the biggest crisis that has ever jeopardized Project Management and Organizational Change.  The world came to a grinding halt with little warning and no rulebook on how to deal with it.  COVID 19 is a crisis that…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects July 15, 2020 As the name DevOps implies, it is a combination of “Development” and “Operations”.  DevOps has become a popular organizational structure and trend for delivering rapid software deployments within the enterprise.  And the best thing about DevOps, it provides both business and…

David Schlinker, Senior Data Architect June 9, 2020 As the volume and complexity of data continue to rise dramatically, the need to organize and make sense of it becomes increasingly important.  That is why many organizations have implemented or are considering a Metadata Management practice to optimize the value of…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects April 16, 2020 I’m not here to debate who’s the king of the castle when it comes to cloud offerings. Many Fortune 500 companies will tell you that AWS is the “beast”. I guess that’s like being a king. Whether a cloud vendor is…

Marianne Hang February 4, 2020 The concept of high performance and supporting high performers is increasingly relevant in the workplace as we look for efficiency, synergy, ethics, and all the power skills needed to build and maintain high performance at both the macro organizational level and the micro project level…

Dipa Birdi, Senior IT Consultant January 9, 2020 In Part I of this article Architecture Challenges in Government Agencies – Part I, we looked at the challenges of establishing a successful architecture practice within a government agency.  Part II of this article aims to examine solutions, approaches, and best practices…

Dipa Birdi, Senior IT Consultant November 18, 2019 Establishing a successful architecture practice in a government agency is a real challenge to say the least.  Such agencies tend to operate a matrix environment and the focus on delivering IT change is directed towards a solution that meets immediate needs.   Everything…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects October 9, 2019 Proper IT budgeting is what makes or breaks an organization. Organizations either optimize their IT services or make a mess of it. IT leaders have a duty to develop a successful IT budget to keep their organization competitive and operationally efficient…

Sasha Vidovic, Senior Service Desk Consultant Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects  September 13, 2019   There’s a service for everything in IT, so why not a service for desktop support.  Well, it’s finally here and we call it Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS).  I’m sure you’re so wrapped up with your own…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects August 29, 2019 There’s Public cloud, Private cloud, Hybrid cloud, and now we have Multicloud.  So, what is Multicloud?  Multicloud is the use of multiple cloud computing and storage services in a single heterogeneous architecture.  Specifically, it’s getting all your cloud solutions to work…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects August 17, 2019 Let’s face it, everybody is moving into the cloud.  If you’re not already in the cloud, you’re most likely behind your competitors.  The question is whether you should go into the public or private cloud, or some hybrid.  When moving to…

Dean Ciric, Senior Pricing Specialist August 3, 2019 In Part I of this article The Business Intelligence of Pricing – Part I, I introduced the topic of business intelligence and how it pertains to the pricing of goods and services.  We had to develop a pricing model that incorporates business…

Dean Ciric, Senior Pricing Specialist June 15, 2019 Every business that sells products and services requires a pricing model.  If you can’t price products and services competitively in the marketplace, you will lose out to your competition.  Every pricing model is based on something called “efficient pricing.”  Efficient pricing takes…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects May 28, 2019 The toughest part about protecting corporate IT assets in the cloud is knowing what these assets are and who is using them.  Cloud providers are pretty good at hiding everything going on in the cloud infrastructure – from the cloud’s core…

David Schlinker, Senior Data Architect May 4, 2019 In today’s world of “give it to me raw” Big Data, one might think that data governance is no longer worth the time, effort, or money.  That is not the case.  As volumes, types, and uses of data increase dramatically, the need…

David Brown, Dean of The Indigenous School of Business at Maskwacis Cultural College April 19, 2019 For most indigenous communities, bridging the digital divide is not an easy task, especially in post-secondary education delivery.  Canadian indigenous colleges and universities are significantly and consistently underfunded relative to their non-indigenous peers. I’m…

Eugene D’Arcy, Senior Project Manager April 7, 2019 Ethics is something that I have taken seriously as long as I can remember.  When I was approached to write an article on the topic by a friend, I felt honoured.  After all our conversations on ethics and doing the right thing…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager March 25, 2019 The recent economic slump has transformed many once-confident clients into clients who are now unsure of their requirements, slow to move forward with projects, and prone to delays even once a project is active.  I call these clients “skittish” because while they…

Intkhab Ali, Senior Solution Architect March 09, 2019 The Head of Architecture Meets Her Team Carmen looked around the table at the gathered architects. Some were domain architects, some solution, and the two to the right of her were the only Enterprise Architects. It was 11:00 AM and time to…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects February 26, 2019 The toughest part of selecting a process framework is understanding what’s available, and which framework to use that will have the most advantage for your organization.  A starting point is to ask “How do organizations apply frameworks?”  This depends on the…

Arthur Gniazdowski, CTO of FORMVERSE Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects February 13, 2019 Workflows are all about connecting work, or should I say that they link work tasks together so that people can complete an end-to-end process as a unified team.  However, it’s always been a matter of getting…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects February 2, 2019 A client recently asked me if Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is still relevant.  I explained that SOA is still relevant as ever, although Application Programming Interface (API) is all the buzz at the moment.  This is really a technical discussion but I’ll…

Mary Marasco, Senior Process Architect January 20, 2019 “Continuous Improvement” is one of those terms which describes itself.  Many organization’s hire consultants to help them improve their business processes and organizational performance in a continuous manner as the business environment around them changes. Just to elaborate, continuous improvement is a…

Pat McGowan, Senior Management Consultant January 6, 2019 Once upon a time, dashboards were considered a premium information technology available only to large organizations that could afford expensive enterprise software suites and had significant IT departments to build and maintain them. In the last few years, however, we have seen…

Michael Khodosko, Co-Founder of The Business Architecture Guild’s Calgary Community December 12, 2018 When IT Architects asked me to write about the Business Architecture Community of Alberta, I saw this as an opportunity to promote the business architecture practice. Business Architecture has been confused by both business leaders and IT…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager December 5, 2018 In Part I of this article When Project Management Requires Change Management – Part I , I introduced the fact that projects are increasingly being viewed as OCM focused. This means that the need for organizational change management skills on the part…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager November 25, 2018 “This is an OCM project” is an observation that is regularly directed at me as the Project Manager in charge. It’s somewhat of a surprise because traditionally the perceived value of organizational change management deliverables within projects has been downplayed. Often relegated…

Pat McGowan, Senior Management Consultant November 19, 2018 Do you have a project which is characterized by or exhibits any of the following symptoms? A “cannot afford to fail” mandate; Mega-project risks; Suspect vendor performance; Rumours that refuse to go away; Key personnel burnout; Constant project conflicts; Continuous change requests;…

Garry Arko, Senior Enterprise & Solution Architect November 12, 2018 Over 50 years ago, there was a need to codify data so that computers could understand and use it.  The structuring and modeling of data became a necessity to gain value from computers, and the art and science of data…

Intkhab Ali, Senior Solution Architect November 4, 2018 One of the constants in IT over the past several decades has been the constant need to factor in evolutionary or revolutionary technology changes, at least from an architect’s perspective.  Since the 70s, we’ve seen major game-changing shifts, some of which have…

David Schlinker, Senior Data Warehouse & Analytics Architect October 28, 2018 The Big Data and Advanced Analytics market is growing rapidly with a forecasted 11.4% annual growth rate from 2018-2027, according to Wikibon.  This growth rate with the current adoption rate is of approximately 50% is a good indication of…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager October 21, 2018 Managing a Shitstorm Have you ever had a project turn into a shitstorm, with no option but to manage your way out of it?  The term “shitstorm” is an actual business term defined in Wikipedia as “a situation marked by violent controversy…

Ade Odusote, Senior IT Architect October 15, 2018 As in the building construction industry, the scope of IT Architecture is broad; Private vs Public, High Level vs Detailed, and Technology vs Business are just a few examples. From a functional perspective, today’s organization applies this Architecture in different areas, including…

Patricia Udokang, Senior Business Architect October 9, 2018 What does it take to create the perfect business process? Realistically, it’s not easy to create perfection, but one can strive for excellence, so let’s talk about creating an excellent business process. A business process is a sequence of activities resulting in…

Randy Radic, Senior IT & Management Consultant September 10, 2018 Does your organization find it challenging to develop believable business cases that will get the support of key stakeholders and necessary project funding? Is there a proven methodology in your organization to prioritize proposed projects to select the highest value initiatives? …

Dusan Jugovic, Senior Systems Engineer (Partner at Codeeco) September 5, 2018 Developing ERP applications is not something that I had in mind when I started my undergraduate studies in university.  During my third year in the Faculty of Science, I was offered an opportunity to join a programming team responsible for…

Intkhab Ali, Senior Solution Architect August 29, 2018 About 25 years ago (literally on the cusp of the popularity of the Web), my boss at the time ​did a symposium presentation on the “ignorance explosion”, which was a play on the phrase “information explosion”. He was not referring to people…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects August 23, 2018 In News Release #1, the focus was to explain what Service-as-a-Architecture (AaaS) was, and what it was NOT. There is a lot of confusion as to what AaaS is, and if you conduct a survey with ten IT professionals, chances are…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects August 15, 2018 Everything is a service these days, even architecture.  If you’re planning to offer any kind of product or service today, chances are you won’t be the first.  I can’t help but think about Kicking Horse Coffee and the fact that they…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager August 07, 2018 Taking it Home In Part 2 of this blog series, I recommended three key project management documents that are important to build and present early on in a project where there is no project management framework. Now you’re a month or two…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager July 30, 2018 Now For Some Quick Wins In Part 1 of this blog series, I introduced a scenario of landing in a project management role where there is no project management framework. The first steps we talked about to help survive and thrive in…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager July 23, 2018 So you’ve been asked to manage a project – but there’s no framework to do that, no PMO in sight, and your client thinks they know what project management is, except they don’t. If you’re lucky, your client is aware of these…

Gary Silberg, Senior Solution & Enterprise Architect July 16, 2018 In Part I of this blog The Art of Establishing an IT Architecture Program – Part I, I explored why a company would want to create an IT Architecture Program, when to create it, who to put on the team, and…

Gary Silberg, Senior Solution & Enterprise Architect July 8, 2018 So you want to establish an Information Technology Architecture Program in your organization? You think your IT projects haven’t been fully successful under the leadership of your Project Managers, Business Analysts, and Technical Leads? Can an IT architecture program really…

Raza Qazi, Junior Enterprise Architect June 4, 2018 I hadn’t even finished my computer science degree when I was offered a junior enterprise architect part-time role while I was in my last year of studies. I didn’t even know that an enterprise architect could be junior. Regardless, this was my…

Milan Dabic (P.Eng.), Senior Systems Engineer & Software Architect May 28, 2018 As architects – whether it is Enterprise, Solution, Domain, Process, Data, Application, Technology, or Software – we work in a jumble of different project and architectural methodologies. In this article, I would like to discuss the challenges and…

Ade Odusote, Senior Domain Architect Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects May 22, 2018 While an Enterprise Architect leads the development of a single holistic enterprise architecture model for the whole of the organization (from all architecture perspectives including Business Services, Business Processes, Information, Applications, and Technology), a Solution Architect provides a bridge between…

Garry Arko, Senior Enterprise & Solution Architect May 9, 2018 While a good Architecture will avoid going too far into details, it should also recognize the implications of details and provide a framework and guidelines that can enable beneficial and valued solutions. One of the concepts that is often overlooked…

Milan Dabic (P.Eng.), Senior Systems Engineer & Software Architect May 2, 2018 Change, or the plan to change, is probably the number one reason an organization hires architects, especially when their system landscape is becoming a little antiquated and management is screaming for legacy modernization. Sometimes it’s the business that…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager April 25, 2018 It was not too long ago that I published an article about the agile method of project management versus waterfall, and provided recommendations when one fits better than the other. In real-life project management, we don’t always have the luxury of making…

Alex Djordjevic, System Integration Architect April 21, 2018 Old MacDonald had a farm E-A-I-E-I-E-I-O. I’m sure if you’re not familiar with integration, you may think that EAI is a popular nursery rhyme. However, that’s not the case. In the business world, we take Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) very seriously. EAI is…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager April 11, 2018 How can a project go from start to finish, and then find itself unprepared when it comes time to hand off the new system to Operations? This happens a lot more often than you’d think so I thought I’d offer some pointers…

Gary Silberg, Senior Solution & Enterprise Architect April 5, 2018   Although Solution Architects and Enterprise Architects are two different animals, they have a mutual respect for each other and typically work together. One starts things off and then the other takes over. The Enterprise Architect is the strategist and…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager March 29, 2018   As a newcomer to project management in the early days, there was no set project management methodology. Projects either worked or they didn’t – we either completed them successfully or we abandoned them. Over the years, we learned and developed a…

Marianne Hang, Senior Project Manager March 23, 2018 What does a Project Manager who has been in the business for 25 years say about architecture and how it saved my life on more than a few occasions? I’ve seen it all, everything from pure project management using waterfall methodology to…

Milan Dabic (P.Eng.), Senior Systems Engineer & Software Architect March 6, 2018 There’s always a torrent of new ideas and technology. It’s a fact of life that we all recognize. Today, at the forefront of that torrent, are the ideas and technologies called the Internet of Things (IoT). Every one…

Bruce McRitchie, Principal of IT Architects February 12, 2018 A long time ago, as an Account Executive for a reputable IT consulting firm, IT Architecture was one of our upcoming practice areas (we were perhaps a little ahead as it was not that common at the time), and we had…

Chris Schultz, Senior IT Management ConsultantFebruary 8, 2018 The legacy of IT Architecture practices in many shops is dismal at best. This is not due to any flaws of best practices, or efforts on the part of those engaged in applying Architecture methods and techniques. Generally, these practices will yield…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects February 4, 2018   Business Reference Models illustrate the functional and organizational composition of the core business of an organization. We sometimes call them industry reference models because they may pertain to a specific industry. You can find industry-specific business reference models for all…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects January 22, 2018 Before we jump into cloud integration, I have a foundational question: What is cloud? We better understand what it is that we’re integrating before we dive in. I think this is a fair question considering that cloud is a misunderstood term…

Bob Ivkovic, Principal of IT Architects January 15, 2018   Artificial Intelligence or AI has been around since I was born, and I’m no spring chicken.  When I started my career as an Oracle DBA back in 1983, we had an AI group in the IT department.  I’m not sure…