Managing Director – Enterprise Architecture Center Of Excellence and Business Architecture Center Of Excellence
SAMUEL B. (Sam) HOLCMAN is considered the practitioner’s practitioner in Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture, and the leading implementer and worldwide educator and trainer in Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture methodologies and techniques.
What attracted you to data management or IT, and why did you choose to pursue this career?
As an engineer early on in my career, it became clear that virtually everything, to some degree, would involve Information Technology. Within technology, data is a key, if not a key element. No matter how much people try, you cannot turn a “data swamp” into a “data lake” or any terms similar to this. This led me to the world of Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture, as the gateway to data management.
What has been your greatest career accomplishment so far, and why has it been important to your career?
Being considered, by a humbling number of organizations, as the practitioner’s practitioner in Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture and working with over fifty percent of fortune 500 companies.
What are the two or three biggest challenges you face as a data management professional / CDO and how can we address them?
Recognizing that a “tool in the hands of a fool, makes the person a greater fool!”. You cannot turn a “data swamp” into a “data lake”. You cannot reverse engineer something that has not been engineered in the first place. The cycle for success is (1) Architect, (2) analyze, (3) design, (4) assemble solutions to order.
How do you see data management / the role of the CDO / IT changing in the next 2 – 3 years?
We suggest that the “leader” will be the “Certified Agile Enterprise Practitioner TM “ as this is what organizations are looking for – not agile programmers, etc. And most importantly, getting CDO / IT to recognize that passing a “multiple guess” exam, does not make a person a “data professional”. It takes actual practice.
Do you have any planned next steps for your career?
Continuing to bring method to the madness in the fields of Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture and moving the fields for the obsession of certification by exam to certification by practice.
What is the single best piece of advice you have received in your data management / IT career so far? Why has it been so important to you?
You cannot reverse engineer something that was not engineered in the first place.
Can you share something about yourself as a person that people wouldn’t know about you?
I have a patent for a machine that injects cream cheese into a bagel!
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