Enterprise Architecture is an important practice that has come out in the last 10 years. To me, its an attempt at the ‘grand unified theory‘ in business & technology. And of the most important models within Enterprise Architecture is to derive the Business Architecture which sits at the top of this tree. After discussing this with a number of people, I have got some traction to a concept I have been talking about for a while that I call it the “Architecture Deck”.
The Architecture Deck is a framework to try and conceptualise the layers of an architecture that helps make business decisions. What is great about this deck is that can quite easily be used to architect a city, a house, an enterprise, a startup, a team or a product, or absolutely anything that can get value from an architectural blueprint.
I’m a big proponent of simple models, and this is about as simple as they get, but you will see in the next series of posts, how it is quite powerful.
Lets start today with explaining the layers (from the bottom);
Foundational
This is the lowest part of the deck, and it describes the most foundational aspects to an architecture. Its where tried and tested, and industry standards (beyond best practices) are employed. You will 99% of the times, engage this in your architectural solution, as there is no benefit to your architectural model to go outside of this. Examples would be the need to have sewerage in a city plan, or cement slab for a house, use IP networks to interconnect computers in an office environment, or use a relational database for storage in a software product. Sure there are other alternatives, but for your current purpose, there is no benefit to go outside of this. This will be described in more detail in future posts.
Functional
The functional layer describes the aspects of the architecture that have many differentiators or competitors, so you have some choice. But this is isolated for 2 special reasons; a) things here do not provide your city, business or product with a competitive advantage, & b) in immature architectures where this is not articulated, every architecture has their own version of it. This is critically important, as what we are trying to identify here is the concept of engaging best practices. Examples here could be a Rail Network in a city, the type of timber floorboards you put in a house, the order process in an enterprise, or software pattern you use in your product. As I’m sure you have already realised, there are many choices with all these examples, but the question that must be asked, “Is there any advantage in trying to be unique here, or are we best to use the methods that others have tried, tested, failed and then got right?”
Innovational
This is the most exciting layer!! This describes what makes your architecture different. What makes New York a great city that others try hard to imitate, why everyone in your street wants a house just like yours, why your office can process sales orders faster than anyone else, or what makes the iOS such a unique OS for Apple that everyone is imitating it! Its the competitive advantage, its the unique streak, and its the innovation that occurs in a city, house design, office operations or software product!
I appreciate that this is all quite esoteric, and the details will come out in future posts, but essentially the basics described here are all that you need to help you make decisions. In future posts we’ll get into the details, we will also look at some real world examples, and we’ll discuss how you can work out your own Architectural Deck.