Graham McLeod

Enterprise and Business Architect

Researcher · Thought Leader · Author · Consultant · Trainer

Graham is the owner and chief architect of Inspired.org, established in 1991. Inspired provides enterprise and business architecture services including training and consulting and products including frameworks, methods, models and software tools.

He is a thought leader in Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Modelling, Business Architecture, Process Modelling, Methods Engineering and Integrated Business and I.T. Strategy. He is a frequent guest and keynote speaker and has been invited to present at various international universities and professional bodies as well as Microsoft Modelling Group in Redmond. He is the author of 7 books and over 70 publications.

Graham is an exceptionally experienced architect, trainer, consultant, modeller, author and business executive. His career spans 47 years with parallel activity in industry and academia (12 years as faculty member at University of Cape Town); in roles spanning information technology/systems as well as business. At UCT he was instrumental in reshaping the curriculum from first year through to directing the part time Postgraduate Honours programme.

Mr McLeod has been active in industry bodies including Computer Society of SA, Computer Users Council, International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), IEEE, ACM and the Open Group. In these, he has been a syllabus author, examiner and special interest group founder and chair. He is a frequent academic reviewer and panel member, having served as reviewer or editor for more than forty conferences and journals. He has backgrounds in Computer Science, Information Systems, Project Management, Enterprise Modelling and Strategy. He is currently pursuing Doctoral research in the area of Visual Language Design and Tool Support for Enterprise Modelling at Univ. Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Graham became involved with integration of business and I.T. strategy as early as 1987 with a thesis on the Holistic Planning System (HOPS). He was part of a team that produced Tetrarch/1, a commercial I.T. strategy method that predated widespread Enterprise Architecture awareness and consulted widely on the implementation of this method. His first “business architecture” consulting project was in 1989 with a global oil company.

Graham founded Inspired in 1991, in parallel to taking up academic teaching. In the 1990s his focus was mainly on system development methods, project management and IS Management. He was instrumental in the introduction of object orientation and agile methods in both academia and industry. He authored the Inspired Advanced System Delivery method.

From the late 1990s, Graham increasingly focussed on EA, resulting in the development of unique EA frameworks, meta models and, later, supporting tooling. Unique methods were also evolved for methods engineering (ME), process modelling and process architectures.

Mr McLeod has consulted across four continents and a wide range of industries, including banking, finance, assurance, retail, manufacturing, telecoms, healthcare, services, media and government. He has worked with over 75 corporate clients completing scores of projects, the majority of these architecture related. His focus in the last 18 years has been heavily on the integration of business, strategy and enterprise architecture. He is the architect of the Inspired Enterprise Value Architect (EVA) software platform, which provides a SaaS environment, repository, web user interfaces and graphical modelling toolset to support the work of strategists, enterprise architects, programme managers and other knowledge workers.

Inspired endeavours to leverage and align to industry standards and "best practice" where possible, but is not constrained to these where they are found lacking. Graham co-developed the Practical TOGAF® course which has trained hundreds of EAs to certification level over the past 15 years. He updated the course to TOGAF 9.2 and attained the Open Group business architecture credential. He recently updated the offering to the TOGAF® Standard 10th Edition. However, Inspired believes that the Open Group offering in this space, while useful, is only a small fragment of what a business architect should know.

Graham is also a member of the Business Architecture Guild. While the BizBok body of knowledge advocated by the Guild has better coverage, it too is not fully comprehensive. Inspired created comprehensive EA and Business Architecture meta models, methods and techniques from 1991 and has continuously evolved these to the present.

Inspired introduced a Techniques and Deliverables of Business Architecture course in 2011. This has run ever since to wide acclaim, remaining relevant through frequent revisions. In 2019, Graham and colleagues completed an overhaul of the Inspired EA frameworks, meta models and approach. This resulted in the Inspired Holistic Architecture Language. He also developed and launched an advanced course imparting new ideas and meta skills. This emerged as the Business Architecture Mastery Programme in 2021 and is now established as a premier international offering. Informed by consulting experience and recent PhD research, Graham has recently extended the Holistic Language to include Enterprise Risk and support for Maturity Models.

Graham is an inspiring teacher and facilitator and loves sharing knowledge, techniques, insights and inspirations with students and clients. He has developed and taught over 70 courses and inspired thousands of professionals now practicing as architects in SA, UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, USA, Nigeria, Middle East and Malaysia. He is deeply interested in education and upliftment and co-founded a Montessori school with his late wife. He has recently become chair of the University of Cape Town Dept. of Information Systems Advisory Committee.

He has in depth I.T. knowledge derived from academic study and teaching, software development, project management, design, architecture and engagement with many clients and industries spanning 47 years.

Graham has first hand insight into business as well: He is an entrepreneur, started multiple companies, acted as general manager and served as chief technology officer, chief executive, board member and board chairman. These roles spanned South Africa, UK and Switzerland.

Although not having much time for hands on development, he is still competent at coding and likes to prototype and build proofs of concept as precursors to production development.

Detailed curriculum vitae tables for Graham’s career are available here.