2008/5/28 Nick Gall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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.
Now this I agree with and its quite a nice definition. How do you think things like business strategy would link in (its a sort of requirement but not as we know it Jim). I'd also be inclined to broaden system implementation into IT delivery as I think that architecture should focus at least as much on the operations and organisational effectiveness of IT in meeting the business objectives. This is also important in a distributed Services estate as it needs to cover the interaction between services whether inside or outside of a companies domain. Steve > > -- Nick >
