#1 - Beginning of the Journey

This is the first blog on the Blueprint for Humankind website, focused on the very first steps of the path that led to the current state working with Morgan James Publishing on internal book design. My intent of this blog overall is to provide the reader a view into the living journey before the first book existed, getting it written and published, then the resulting efforts to launch the proposed blueprint development.

The first inkling of the Blueprint for Humanity concept started in the 2020 timeframe. I was working with a small group of experts from 2017 to 2020 to bring the proven Business Architecture discipline, based on the work of the Business Architecture Guild (the BIZBOK®), into The Open Group ecosystem for Enterprise Architecture (TOGAF®). We had many rich discussions during symposia and webinars with experienced professionals who had limited exposure to business architecture as a cohesive discipline. Because they were hearing some of the concepts for the first time, such as the criticality of understanding the intended values and required capabilities before assuming anything about implemented solutions, they tended to ask us tough questions that really required us to stop and think.

One of the recurring questions was “What’s the scope of the Enterprise where these methods apply?” What many of them were getting at might be considered the “low scope” cases, for example where the project was just to refresh an existing technology, and our answer to that was the same every time. There’s never a good excuse for skipping the Business Architecture phase, but for a very small project, you may only need a 1-2 hour workshop with the right stakeholders to ensure the team is aligned on intended value, required capabilities, and in general what the desired result should be independent of the proposed solution (which technical professionals have often already assumed). If the assigned architect does this correctly, there will be situations where the team realizes the assumed solution would be a complete waste of time and resources.

But back to a focus on our journey on this site, the same questions also caused me to think about how big the scope and enterprise could be. An enterprise can of course be of any scope, but it should have some type of identity and shared elements, so it has boundaries to then apply proven methods and tools to architect better paths for that enterprise. So while I thought of humanity as a whole as a possible scope back in the 2020 timeframe, it took a while to think through the path to the most commonly shared values of humankind and the use cases for applying such a blueprint.

The key to the former is that success doesn’t hinge on all of humankind having common values, but rather that based on some manner of unbiased assessment (not the opinion of a small group of people with a possible agenda), determining the initial small list of values that are the most shared across humankind. The key to the latter is that we build in not only support for the more obvious use cases (e.g. sustainable development, feeding the hungry, multi-national collaboration), but also at all times maintain a strong mapping back to those shared values of individual humans and communities. This association is what ensures the blueprint is truly for humankind, rather than focused on the goals of a small set of vocal individuals.

From there, about one year before retiring from my career, I started talking to a few people about the concept and refining the approach for this first book. The real writing launched right after retirement (April 2025), gathering inputs from additional experts and expanding research, then engaging with a publisher in September 2025. That interesting journey, on what it really takes to publish a book (in comparison to guides and articles) and ensure coverage by bookstores, will be another blog. This website includes the initial means to obtain the book well before it hits bookstores, but also provides an initial location to launch the broader ecosystem required to support an endeavor as broad as the Blueprint for Humankind.