Lance Gardner
- Enterprise Architect with 25+ years of IT experience -
Ideology
Strategic planning is extremely important. Take the guess work out of making the correct choices by structuring knowledge to create a decision making platform and watch business innovation flourish, while optimising TCO and ROI. I truly believe that once the correct decisions have been made, and everyone is moving in the same direction, everyone becomes a better leader.
What sets me apart from the rest?
People tend to want to do business with people they know, like and trust. Divulging problems to a stranger is not something that comes naturally so building a trusting relationship is an important factor. Many professional advisors spend too much time fine-tuning their logical arguments and not enough time thinking about how the business feels. The good advisors understand that making a big decision is very emotional, they take the time to dig below the surface and understand the underlying requirements, not just the surface needs, and try to understand what you are trying to achieve and what the motivations are.
What do your industry peers think?
Richard McPartlin
CTO / CIO - Lagardere Travel Retail
CIO - Inghams Enterprises
I've engaged Lance on 2 occasions, in two disparate industries with different IT and business challenges. Lance is exceptional in being able to rapidly grasp the business challenges and break this down pragmatically into architectural domains capturing the As Is state and to help define road map for Future State. Lance engages really well with business stakeholders, defines complex business requirements in simple terms making it much easier to create a solution. Lance brings years of experience to the table and can be trusted with providing his expertise in any situation. I wouldn't hesitate to work with Lance again and highly recommend him.
Brett Hartley
Program Director – WaterNSW
(Managing Director at Focused Business Solutions on assignment at WaterNSW)
Lance is a ‘1 in a million’ enterprise architect who delivers exceptional solutions because of his attention to detail. He has worked with us on an extremely challenging project and at all times was professional and a team member who was willing to help wherever needed. His stand-out skill is his ability to produce diagrams that are almost a work of art because of Lance’s ability to portray complex matters as simply as possible. We were so impressed with him, we have asked him to work with us on another project, which we are pleased to say he has agreed to do. Brett Hartley, Director, Focused Business Solutions
Recent Career Highlight - WaterNSW
The project had stalled and WaterNSW had no choice but to engage a new program management team from Focused Business Solutions (FBS). Having worked with FBS before they reached out and asked if I'd be part of the senior leadership team as the lead project architect. As the project was already running well behind schedule I prioritised key business requirements for an initial release of the system and developed a roadmap for continuous improvement and a release strategy inline with WaterNSW’s key business initiatives. I took a more agile approach and concentrated on business outcomes rather than the vendors’ solution. The technical details had stalled the project and business stakeholders were reluctant to sign-off anything they did not understand. I advised them to develop and run an extensive UAT program that would keep the vendor accountable to the business requirements and the project scope. The project re-gained momentum and WaterNSW stakeholders found the UAT experience very beneficial and the vendor was kept accountable. See what the WaterNSW CFO & CIO said: www.focusedbusiness.com.au/testimonials
My Enterprise Architecture Core Qualities
Exceptional Stakeholder Engagement
A common mistake I see when enterprise architects produce artefacts is they produce artefacts for themselves. They spend a lot of time documenting landscapes, they define roadmaps, and target state architectures. However, they are in a format to support themselves. They are virtually unreadable unless of course you are another architect. In all my Enterprise Architect engagements I have always focused my artefacts to suit certain stakeholders. That is why my guiding principal is “The right artefact for the right stakeholder”. Good Stakeholder management is paramount and you must know your audience. The more engagement you see from your audience the more accurate your artefacts will be and they will develop much quicker. Best of all they will get used!
Industry Knowledge
I have an architectural understanding of multiple critical technologies and industry standard methodologies. It is my job to let the business community know what new innovations are available and how they can be used to benefit the business. Whether it's a new agile methodology or a disruptive new technology, you can trust me to know what is available.
Unique and Unbiased
Too often enterprise architects follow patterns they have used before. However these patterns are more to benefit themselves. How fine tuned to the desired goals are they? Are they trying to make something fit because they have seen it work somewhere else before? Enterprise architecture needs an unbiased opinion so I look for differences rather than similarities between my clients. Industry standards solutions will work, but this is the straight forward section. It's the differences that makes your company unique and these differences will set you apart from your competition.
