On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 6:43 PM, Rob Eamon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- In service-orientated-architecture@yahoogroups.com, "Nick Gall" > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> What's richly ironic here (and I live for irony) is that what you >> two are trying to shoehorn into the word "architecture", building >> architects are shoehorning into the word "programming"! LOL > > I guess I'm missing what we're trying to shoehorn in "architecture." > I'm not trying to lump requirements gathering or governance into > architecture.
My apologies Rob. After going back and carefully reading through the thread between you and Steve I realized that only Steve was explicitly shoehorning governance into "architecture". Steve: "what I'm using now is the IEEE definition where it talks about the governance of design being architecture. That to me makes quite a bit of sense." All *you *claimed was that, "In the past, I usually described architecture as design + explicit principles. I now think there is a bit more to it than that and that's what I'm attempting to explore here." I look forward to hearing the results of your explorations. BTW, I am not against "shoehorning" new meanings into old terms (as long as one explains the new meaning when introducing it into a conversation; at least until the new meaning becomes the common meaning). In fact, Gartner has shoehorned a lot of new meaning into architecture, specifically enterprise architecture. Here is our definition of enterprise architecture, which we've been using for the past 2+ years: *Enterprise architecture (EA) is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key principles and models that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution.* So to Gartner, EA is a process, not a thing. The "thing" part of architecture is the set of "architectural descriptions" (a la IEEE-1471) -- it is the process around those descriptions that brings them to life. If I were to attempt to generalize the Gartner definition of EA to all architecture, it would look roughly like this: * Architecture is the process of translating initial and ongoing requirements into effective system implementation and change by creating, communicating, and improving the key principles and models that describe the system's desired state and enable its evolution.* Building architects might call this a description of "architectural programming". Whatever you call it, I believe it is the most essential aspect of the architectural process -- because of its emphasis on enabling the evolution of the architecture. -- Nick
