Recap: November 2017 - June 2019

Supervising Enterprise IT Architecture

From November 2017 to June 2019 I supervised the Enterprise IT Architecture team within UCLA IT Services.  I had participated in team meetings for a year before applying for the supervisor position and I was excited about accepting responsibility for developing a unit again, especially one that had the potential to assist in many IT areas within IT Services and across the campus. As supervisor of IT Architecture I also continued to organize and convene the IT Architecture Steering Committee meetings.

Diagram of the role of the IT Architecture team

To set up shop I established our website at https://spaces.ais.ucla.edu/display/itsvcea/Enterprise+IT+Architecture+Unit and began consolidating and organizing our online content and materials. I encouraged the team to participate with campus workgroups and architecture interest groups such as ITANA while increasing my own involvement in campus groups and programs.  I also attended the Gartner EA Summit in June.

As mentioned in my previous post, a wave of departures began in January 2018 and this directly impacted the EA program. The CIO had been our primary champion and he was the first to leave. Within a span of months we lost several other directors, including my own. By July 2018 the organization was reeling and the departures that had occurred began to affect decision making. At the same time the IT governance in place at UCLA was also being reconsidered. We had been hit by the perfect trifecta of uncertainty - brain drain, restructuring, and governance changes. We continued to operate but some decisions were put on hold waiting for a CIO or permanent CISO to be hired.

Bu summer one of my team had also chosen to leave and I took on the additional role of the UCLA representative for the UC ITAC - IT Architecture Committee. This systemwide group of IT architects focused on the development and review of artifacts to improve the quality of systemwide services.

Logo and catchphrase of the UCLA Green IT Taskforce - GrITT

As the fall of 2018 began I became further engaged in campus-wide activities. I volunteered to participate in the rebirth of the UCLA Green IT Taskforce, a formal task force of the UCLA Sustainability Committee, and was then asked to lead the effort. I was nominated for the campus Management Enrichment Program and completed the UC Professional Skills for Supervisors certification program.  To further the cause of Green IT I co-sponsored a campus Professional Development Project (PDP) team with the goal of polling and interviewing the campus IT leaders regarding Green IT issues. In October I ran an EA birds-of-a-feather session at the Internet2 TechEx conference and in December I presented on EA metrics on the monthly ITANA conference call. I also ran a second birds-of-a-feather EA session at the March Internet2 Global Summit.

Through the period from June 2018 to June 2019 I focused the Architecture team on developing an application inventory process that could be used to support the selection of applications to be migrated to AWS over the next year. We also leveraged the inventory for use with the campus Business Continuity program.

The Enterprise Architecture presentations and activities I led with wider audiences than UCLA during this time period included:

• Oct 17, 2018 - Internet2 TechEx "Enterprise Architecture BoF"
• Dec 14, 2018 - ITANA monthly meeting "Capturing Architectural Posture - A Metrics-based Approach" - portions of this presentation were later presented at the 2019 Internet2 TechEx in a presentation "How Do I Architect? Let Me Count the Ways" and that material then informed the presentation "Whether Forecasting: Informing Migration Choices with Metrics" given January 22, 2020 to the EDUCAUSE Cloud Computing Constituent Group.

One of the campus activities I decided to participate in to increase my awareness of campus departments was a series of open houses sponsored by various administrative departments held in the spring of 2019.  One of these was held in the Campus Emergency Operations Center and afterwards I decided to pursue a role in the Planning Section for the EOC. This requires FEMA training as well as ongoing participation in campus exercises and EOC activations but it also offers a unique look into various departments of the campus.

As the end of the 2018-2019 fiscal year approaches many of the activities I have been engaged in these last nine months are drawing to a close. In the newly announced organizational structure my role will be focused on AWS migration and I will no longer be supervising EA. The UC ITLC has decided to shut down ITAC and the June Architecture Steering Committee meeting was the last. The PDP team completed its work and I have completed the MEP program. Going forward I will continue to chair the Green IT Taskforce and be engaged in Sustainability activities and CEOG activities. We should have a new CISO and a new CIO later this calendar year and I will have a new supervisor and be reporting to a new director.

It has been an exciting time and more excitement awaits.