Have you ever thought about how often the “trends” changes in your organisation? It is fascinating just how fast many organisations jump aboard the newest management hype, be it methods, technologies or organisational frameworks with the promise of solving all the problems we have struggled with for decades. Not long ago everyone needed an Enterprise…
Our value proposition
What is the highest you can achieve as an architect? To satisfy your customers? To make the optimal architecture for a problem area? Seeing the architecture through to implementation? Just give it a moment to think. What would make you really proud? For us the biggest achievement is to take part of establishing an architecture…
Belief #10 Best architecture practices value communication and stakeholder engagement over intricate modelling
Have you ever created a well-defined and precise model describing the architecture of your project or business – only to see that it is not really used? You end up with outdated diagrams, a beautiful meta-model and an advanced modelling tool that can generate reports and XML, while your key stakeholders keep discussing their stupid…
Belief #9 Best architectures are scoped top-down and validated bottom-up
Have you ever endured “ivory-tower architectures”? In belief #3 we looked at the need for a business purpose-driven approach. We also explained how the opposite approach with technology- or vendor-centric architectures, drive us to “IT projects” and solutions with no clear business ownership and low flexibility. All too often, we build “software capabilities” instead of “business capabilities”. In belief #7 we looked at the value of keeping together what is common and separating…
Belief #8 Best Architectures are embedded with the change organization
Have you ever considered how architecture should be placed in relation to change initiatives in the organization? That is the topic of this belief. Irrespective of how we organize change in our organization, the architecture function has to be an integral part of it. It shall not be someone trying to advise or govern the change organization from the outside. The first reason for this is to ensure alignment between…
Belief #7 Best architectures keep together what is common and separate what is not
Have you ever wondered, what the grand old principle of separating concerns really means? There are many concerns! Yet in our mind separating concerns is imperative for creating simple and flexible architectures. Let’s have a look at the following example: Someone in my organisation suggest that we solve our data sourcing problems by having all…
Belief #6 Best architectures are contextual
Have you ever been told that you could save a lot of time and discussion if you adopted a standard and then safeguarded it with no customisations? The rationale behind the statement is typically that you should not invent it yourself when there is a well-recognized international standard. However, we have more than once experienced…
Belief #5 Best architectures enable organisational agility
Have you ever experienced that your architecture is limiting your agility? We have indeed and often it is because of no or too much architecture guidance. We have also experienced people stating agility is about fast changes, and therefore contradicts the up-front creation of architecture. We agree that agility is the ability of an organization…
Belief #4 Best architectures are based on learning
Have you ever found your organisation repeating its mistakes? Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet this is exactly what we often see happening in our work life. One reason is the so called “zero defect culture” in some organisations, where people are not…
If all you have is a hammer…
Have you ever experienced business people express their need in the shape of the tool they want to upgrade with a new feature or integration? Perhaps they have also specified where the needed data can be sourced from. These dedicated people believe they are helping the “IT people” to deliver faster by being concrete and…
Belief #3 Best architectures enable purpose driven business outcomes
Have you ever encountered technology- or vendor-centric architectures? Our guess is you have seen something like this, because it is rather common. The rationale is often that we want a common technical platform (and software vendor) for all applications in a given area. This will ensure we have everything in the same solution and only…