@tetradian on Architecture v Design – my observations
I just read Tom’s thought-provoking post
Great conversations on enterprise-architecture here http://tinyurl.com/3uu2bn3
In this post Tom notes:
“The other point was an easy way to resolve the age-old argument about architecture versus design. They’re actually part of the same spectrum from vision to realisation, from ‘why’ to ‘how’ and so on. The only difference between them is which way they face: architecture tends to face ‘upward’, towards the big-picture, the vision, or ‘why’, whilst design tends to face ‘downward’, towards the detail, the real-world realisation, the how and who and where and when and with-what”.
I’m afraid I believe it’s not as simple as that. The design work I do is the design of the “big” not the detail. I also do architecture work and make use of the work of other architects. This helps constrain the “big” design with useful principles, patterns, reference models, standards and policies. These designs are the ‘action-focused’ means-by-which the business Vision is realised. This, IMO, has more do with mindset than with level of detail – I refer here to Roger Martin’s Design Thinking (I believe to be the basis of Gartner’s Hybrid Thinking) and his thought on Validity-Reliability continuum – I posted about a while ago here http://tinyurl.com/3488rlj – Balancing Reliability-X and Validity-Y
You can see from this post, made in 2009, I too, can be accused of ‘smudging’ the boundaries between Design and Architecture ( and sometimes strategy as well!). In my defence, these concepts often manifest as different views of essentially the same desired business outcome.
Maybe the difference is that architecture is more focused, on the contextual, structural and codes-of-parctice whereas design is more focused on a specific outcome. Both are pinned to Vision regardless of size and scope. The architecture frames the design and ensures consistency and coherence over the long term and, I would argue, that a Biz-Vision-focused EA is the foundation for good design. I strongly agree that the architecture should be business-led and therefore also facing ‘up’ alongside ‘Big Design’ of business change (aka Business Change Design). To put another way, my work is mostly facing ‘up’ wether I’m acting as architect or designer.
One final observation is that in IT circles the term Design seems to have a narrower meaning than elsewhere. So the debate within IT-centric worldview seems to be rooted in the traditional argument about the differences between Analysis and Design, from an Systems Development Life-Cycle PoV, rather than Roger Martin’s more philosophical Design Thinking. I’m concerned that Tom’s observation “design tends to face ‘downwards'” adds fuel to this IT-centric understanding (which I know from many discussions he would be very unhappy about!).
Does EA practice include both ‘Architecture’ and ‘Big Design’? The debate continues.
N.