Sunday, May 18, 2008
How should enterprise architects think about architecture...
First, it is important for us to stop twisting the meaning of architecture and to acknowledge that architecture is a self-reinforcing metaphor...
Architecture should be thought of as a frame; a set of rules which tells you where a solution is an acceptable addition. There are usually more than one way a problem can be solved, but some make more sense than others given that you already have systems in place.
Why are some solutions better than others? Well, sometimes there are technology limitations. If you are making a distributed system, you may have constraints which force you to distribute some things and not others. If a developer breaks those constraints, they break the architecture. If you have lots of legacy COBOL code, then you must certainly can't consider using Ruby on Rails.
Conversations around architectures should center around determining not what's important, but what's more important. By focusing on constraints, their reason for existence and the human aspects of technology, better architectures can emerge...
| | View blog reactionsArchitecture should be thought of as a frame; a set of rules which tells you where a solution is an acceptable addition. There are usually more than one way a problem can be solved, but some make more sense than others given that you already have systems in place.
Why are some solutions better than others? Well, sometimes there are technology limitations. If you are making a distributed system, you may have constraints which force you to distribute some things and not others. If a developer breaks those constraints, they break the architecture. If you have lots of legacy COBOL code, then you must certainly can't consider using Ruby on Rails.
Conversations around architectures should center around determining not what's important, but what's more important. By focusing on constraints, their reason for existence and the human aspects of technology, better architectures can emerge...
