Solution Architecture

The Hidden Cost of Cheap – UX and Internal Applications

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Why would anyone worry about user experience for anything that’s not customer-facing? This question was the premise of Maurice Roach’s post in the Zühlke blog, “Empathise with your users or you won’t solve their problems”: Bring up the subject of user empathy with some engineers or product owners and you’ll probably hear comments that fall […]

Innovation – What’s Old can be New Again

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There’s an old rhyme about what a bride should wear for luck on her wedding day: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”. While reading an article on the origins of the US highway system, I thought about this rhyme in relation to the concept of innovation. Part of that article related the US […]

The Enterprise Architect of Hamelyn

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Stakeholder Concern Enterprise Focus Project Focus
The city of Hamelyn is plagued with rats. This indicates a serious problem with the “Public Health and Hygiene” capability. We just need a quick project to eliminate the rats. So we buy some “Eliminate Creature” capability from an external vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the rats. Real business problem has not been addressed. Let’s now push on with the next phase of solving the problem. Project successful.
The Pied Piper is too expensive. We need a careful transition plan while we build an in-house capability. Let us immediately renegotiate our contract with the vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the children. It turns out that the Pied Piper can reuse his “Eliminate Creature” capability for other purposes. !*!?**!
Which Role? Enterprise Architect?
Strategic Procurement?		 Solution Architect?
Tactical Procurement?

See also my article “Requirements Engineering as if Stakeholders Mattered” (Requirenautics Quarterly, Issue 29, August 2003, pdf)

The Enterprise Architect of Hamelyn

by

Stakeholder Concern Enterprise Focus Project Focus
The city of Hamelyn is plagued with rats. This indicates a serious problem with the “Public Health and Hygiene” capability. We just need a quick project to eliminate the rats. So we buy some “Eliminate Creature” capability from an external vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the rats. Real business problem has not been addressed. Let’s now push on with the next phase of solving the problem. Project successful.
The Pied Piper is too expensive. We need a careful transition plan while we build an in-house capability. Let us immediately renegotiate our contract with the vendor.
The Pied Piper gets rid of the children. It turns out that the Pied Piper can reuse his “Eliminate Creature” capability for other purposes. !*!?**!
Which Role? Enterprise Architect?
Strategic Procurement?		 Solution Architect?
Tactical Procurement?

See also my article “Requirements Engineering as if Stakeholders Mattered” (Requirenautics Quarterly, Issue 29, August 2003, pdf)

Integration – Send Me a Message

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I recently had the opportunity to work on a project where we were bringing in a vendor product that required data integration with a number of our client’s in house transaction applications. We needed to determine how the internal applications would integrate with the new product.  I figured the timing was right to build on […]

Think Strategically, Proceed Practically

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Knowing the strategic solution is only part of the challenge. Let’s assume you are able to establish the “right and just” solution either because your enterprise has well documented target architectures and roadmaps or your solution has a well established “best practice” pattern you can apply. Take a moment to savor your success, but only […]

Hey, Did You Get My Message?

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There are different ways for applications to talk to one another. These can include: File Transfer Web Services Shared Data Messaging All have their strengths and weaknesses but for now let’s focus on the advantages of messaging. What is messaging? Messaging is a technology that enables asynchronous communication of messages between systems and also includes […]

So you have to transmit some files, huh?

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When was the last time you found yourself on a project that didn’t involve some degree of file transmission? No, that one doesn’t count… Ok, so maybe you occasionally have a solution that doesn’t require any file delivery but every architect worth his weight in .csv files is going to come across this task at […]