8:00 am – 9:00 am: “What is a Chief Architect and how do I become one?“

GRANT ECKER
VP Global Enterprise Architecture & Executive Coach at WBA

Grant, our Chief Architect Forum (CAF) chair will welcome us to the conference, introduce the CAF and walk us through the day’s agenda before opening with his topic to ground us on “What is a Chief Architect and how do I become one?” Let’s dig into the misconceptions and the realities of the role of the Chief Architect. We’ll talk about what is required to perform the role in terms of culture, people and technology leadership and the types of challenges that land with the Chief Architect of an organization. Where does a Chief Architect need to focus upwards, laterally and downward in the organization? What forums are important to create and join? We’ll also cover the various architect roles and some tips to navigate towards obtaining these interesting positions!

9:00 am – 10 am: “Strategy to Reality: A fireside chat with Whynde Kuehn“

WHYNDE KUEHN
Founder and Managing Director, S2E Transformation Inc.

BRICE OMINSKI
Director of Business Architecture, Manitoba Public Insurance

The Chief Architect needs to understand how to take their company’s business direction and execute it while enlisting the support and direction of senior executives. Business architecture is a relatively newer approach to capturing the strategic direction and demonstrating how to move to execution. However, there are many potential pitfalls and traps. Enter Whynde Kuehn and her new book, “Strategy to Reality: Making the Impossible Possible.” Join Brice Ominski and Whynde Kuehn on November 10th as they further explore topics raised in this book. Then, join us in the fireside chat as we explore the steps the Chief Architect needs to take to build an effective business architecture that establishes their role as a trusted advisor to the executive team. We will also discuss the motivation for this book and Whynde’s challenges as a business architecture sherpa, as she has helped evolve this discipline from its early conception to its current incarnation.

10 am – 11 am: “Showing the value of your business-oriented Enterprise Architecture team”

JASON BARAGRY

Chief Enterprise Architect at Ardoq

Enterprise architecture teams struggle to quantify the benefits they provide to their organizations. They also struggle to build a business case to either establish, expand, or maintain their teams. Indeed, showing the value of EA was identified as one of the top challenges in a recent Chief Architect Forum session. We also see it in our own practice in Ardoq. For instance, last year we surveyed over 100 enterprise architects (EAs) about their biggest mistakes and by far the top answer was the failure to align EA initiatives to business goals. This presentation looks at how EA teams can focus on business outcomes and quantify their efforts in terms that will bridge the communication gap between them and the business side of their organizations.

11 am – 12 pm: “Achieving success with automation in enterprise architecture in big size digital transformation”

GARIMA SINGH

Chief Architect, Sandvik Machining Solutions

Talk will focus on Garima’s experience and journey in executing company wide digital transformation, in decentralized and globally distributed big size enterprises, with help of automated version of enterprise architecture.

12:00 pm – 1:00pm: “Women in Architecture Kickoff Panel“

GRANT ECKER, PAUL PREISS, WHYNDE KUEHN

As organizations navigate some of the most massive shifts in history in our globally connected and increasingly digital world, the role of enterprise architecture has never been more critical. As a global discipline and community of practitioners, we are going to need every one of us to be at our best to help navigate the changes and challenges ahead – and to make sure that the business models and technology of today create a collective tomorrow that we all want to live in.

As we prepare to rise to this occasion, there is a shocking truth about the discipline of architecture to consider though: only around 10% of architect roles are performed by women. In a time when we need the greatest diversity of ideas, perspectives, approaches, talents, and experiences, as well as sheer capacity, we are operating at a significant disadvantage.

However, more and more women are becoming architects as well as moving into leadership roles. They are strong contributors and are shaping architecture in new and unique ways that expand and enhance the entire discipline. Now we just need to take it to the next level with intent and commitment.

In this session Paul Preiss will host a panel of the leaders of the WIA to discuss what the goals and objectives of the organization..

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm: “Data challenges, past present and future”

BEN WRIGHT-JONES

Senior Solution Architect, Worldwide Community Lead for Data & AI, Microsoft.

Our technology landscape is evolving rapidly, and new architecture patterns are constantly emerging to support increasing need for business agility and innovation. In this session, I will take you on a tour of our data past, data present and data future and discuss industry and business triggers driving changes in our architectural approaches. With a data architecture lens, I will provide a perspective on where we have been (data past), where are we today (data present) and where we might be going next (data futures) – looking at the challenges we face with data architecture and management. Covering a diverse set of data-related topics, spanning patterns and practices observed from the birth of data management to current and future considerations including data mesh and data fabric to data ethics.

This session will incorporate industry specific examples with an aim to also provide clarity on how business needs are influencing emerging data architecture patterns and the practical data challenges organisations are facing.

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm: “The Cycle of Resetting EA Orgs”

MOHAMMAD ARSHAD

Enterprise Architecture & Strategy Lead

Research tells us that 70%+ of companies are currently considering or actively in the process of resetting their EA practices. Let’s discuss the trend across several Chief Architect leaders!.

Panelists: Grant Ecker, Michael Arulfo, Pat Lee, Gregory Saxton, Lisa Pratico & Jason Baragry

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm: “Architecting for API’s“

ERIC KARSTEN
Ford Pro, Director of Engineering

Creating the right environment for API management is now core to modern data architectures. This session will review what Ford has done to mature their API environment and how architecture teams take advantage of that capability.

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm: “Hey Chief Architects, does your architecture deliver real business value? Master the challenge of creating a future-proof business with a modern architecture practice”

DANIEL HEBDA

Chief Strategy Officer at MEGA International

Organizations designed to pivot rapidly can accelerate investment, strengthen their resiliency, quickly scale, and meet the digital world’s furious pace of change. All this is made possible by having a modern well-designed architecture. In this session we’ll review how Chief Architects can build their personal brand and reputation to be seen as key contributors to building an agile, resilient, forward-thinking architecture that delivers real business value and future-proofs the enterprise. Join us for practical tips and insights on how to create a lean, adaptive, and modern architecture.

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: “Being a consulting Chief Architect – All the responsibility with none of the authority“

STEPHEN COHEN
CHIEF ARCHITECT, MICROSOFT RAPID RESPONSE

Being a consultanting Chief Architect is weird. Everything is fluid. You may have teams of architects deeply integrated into the program or just a few who may not even know their own organization. In this session we will discuss * how you may establish credibility, identify critical needs, delivery requirements, * a means to establish find weakness in process and governance as well as how bespoke process changes can improve architecture.

In this session we will discuss:

• How you may establish credibility, identify critical needs, delivery requirements.
• A means to establish find weakness in process and governance as well as how bespoke process changes can improve architecture.
• Hand-off and exiting

6:00 pm – 7:00 pm: “Chief Architect Roundtable“

PAUL PREISS
FOUNDER & CEO , IASA GLOBAL

The hosts, Grant Ecker, Chief Architecture Forum(CAF),  Paul Preiss, CEO & Founder of IASA, Mike Fortuna will host to be announced members  of the CAF including Whynde Kuehn, Chair of WIA / founder of S2E, Linda Finley, CA at Cargill, Geeta Pyne, CA at Intuit and Brian Letort, CA at Northrop Grumman in an exciting round table.

 Topics will include trends in architecture practices, the growth in the role, how it has changed.

7:00 pm – 8:00 pm: “Building an Impactful Strategic Roadmap“

BRIAN LETORT
Author, Adjunct Professor, and Chief Architect

Enterprise strategies are documented, communicated, and executed through strategic roadmaps. These critical artifacts bridge the gap between strategic visions and actionable initiatives. During this session, impactful strategic roadmap will be discussed – highlighting key tenets, opportunities, and suggestions for building an influential and realistic roadmap.

8:00 pm – 9:00 pm: “Ingredients of a Successful Microservice Platform Strategy”

ANTHONY SNEED

Chief Technology Architect, Hilti F&P Solutions

Ever since microservices came into vogue, companies have applied this popular architectural pattern with varying degrees of success. However, many times these efforts have failed spectacularly, often resulting in a distributed monolith that is as tightly coupled as a traditional monolith but more complex and difficult to troubleshoot.

In this session Anthony will discuss essential ingredients for a successful Microservice Platform Strategy which will help you achieve the promises of microservices while avoiding the most common pitfalls. Anthony will also share lessons he learned executing this strategy at Hilti and tips for empowering teams to successfully implement it.

9:00 pm – 10:00 pm: “Multi-cloud – the new architecture challenge?“

ULRICH HOMANN
Corporate VP & Distinguished Architect, Microsoft Corp.

Multi-cloud is the topic of the day and is driving a lot of architecture decisions. This session will look at the approaches that have been taken, considers development and operational challenges and ways to solve them.

10:00 pm – 11:00 pm: “Architect your Organization : Extreme Ownership & Conway’s Law“

GEETA PYNE
CHIEF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT, INTUIT

Enterprise Architecture as a linchpin for High Performing, High Growth, and Innovative Organizations

In this session we will discuss:

•  Organization Structure and alignment using end to end architecture-based domain centric capabilities and drive extreme ownership and accountability
• Create a culture of innovation with capabilities and maturity model

11:00 PM – 12:00 AM: “ReImagine architecture enabling Agility, experience and business value at scale”

VISHAL CHOKSI

Chief Architect, BMC Software

We have already seen a seismic shift in employee’s ways of working and how customers interact with enterprises post-COVID. These changes have forced enterprises to reimagine and transform their product and services. Organisations are also adopting new digital operating model, shifting from Silo’d to customer-centric and service-centric to improve the speed of innovation, business value and CEX outcomes. The cultural and operating change, coupled with emerging technologies, has become a catalyst for architecture and its thinking to evolve to support business agility, customer centricity and autonomous teams to stay competitive and empower them in delivering their transformation and innovation objectives.

During this session, we will look at the practical approaches to solving these business challenges to unlock business value and next-generation experiences and capabilities.