Repairing the World

There's a wonderful Jewish traditional value known as tikkum olam that literally means repair the world.

• when you treat someone with kindness -- you help repair the world
• when you go out of our way to help another person -- you help repair the world
• when you act justly -- you help repair the world

The idea is that your action is outward, but your inward goal is to help fulfill God’s purpose. Hopefully, without sounding blasphemous, I feel as though the work of technology architecture and standardization & consolidation is helping to repair the world.

• adopting a simplified, streamlined, less complex, standardized computing environment will reduce inefficiencies and eliminate unnecessary replication



• organizing and simplifying technology portfolios into understandable categories will identify redundancies and enable consolidation of IT assets (cutting at least 10% of technology portfolio costs)



• better navigating and visualizing of current and future technology architecture at both the organizational level and for each business silo, will increase purchasing power, improve knowledge sharing, and enhance overall efficiencies



• communicating IT strategy and technology architecture -- to both management and IT people -- using easy-to-use and easy-to-understand navigation, graphics and colors -- will ensure better compliance with standards and provide the best return on investment

Is it not repairing the world by helping IT organizations leverage their existing portfolio of products, applications and services to effectively plan and implement forward looking strategies?

Is it not repairing the world by helping provide an architecture team with a robust, structured environment (a framework) in which to collect, organize and document IT products and corresponding vendors?

Is it not repairing the world by helping IT visually convey and explain, quickly and easily, architectural standards and requirements to all levels within their enterprise?

My company, Flashmap Systems, is about to start offering a new ASP product called ITguide^TM. While I wouldn't exactly describe ITguide as tikkum olam, I will say that it allows an architect to do what an architect does:

1. model
2. document

With ITguide, the models specify technology architectures that document IT standards.

Keep an eye out for the product's forthcoming introductory announcement that will revolve around repair the world themes -- like help for non-profits and amazingly affordable single-seat pricing for practitioners.

Standardization & consolidation does help repair the world.

BTW, it also saves money.