J. on Architecture

Architects are usually bend on creating flexible and stable solutions that last. The problem is that flexibility comes at a price. Whether it’s an adapter here, or an ESB there, you will always need something extra to make an architecture flexible. But is it always necessary to add that little extra? That depends on the planning horizon of your client.

Architectures will always be realised within projects and projects need to realise the desired goal within the planning horizon. If they don’t, then the project will be a failure and that will make the architecture a failure. This is especially difficult within commercial companies where the planning horizon is getting shorter and shorter. In some companies it’s already less than a year.

But it is architecture still useful then, within these time periods? Yes, it is, because you will still need to make sure that the required qualities are met. Just make sure that you don’t introduce any new ’required’ qualities, while creating the architecture. 

Contrary to other art forms architecture also serves a practical purpose. It has to support business and, where possible, help to improve it. It is of great importance which improvements it can support, because that is the key to the acceptance of the architecture.

When creating an IT architecture you are usually busy enabling aspects like scalability and maintainability in one way or another. These types of flexibility take time to create and often come at a steep price. Take for example components like an ESB and a proper SOA environment in general. But all these aspects are hygiene factors for the client. It is important that the proposed architecture enables the expected response times and that maintenance costs remain acceptable, but in the end this is not what the client really ‘wants’.

The client wants to work more efficiently, get more control over his key processes or attain a larger market share. And that is exactly what will motivate him to accept your architecture. Flexibility is just a crucial extra.

Daniel McGinn wrote an article about the need for more architectural flexibility in housing. This need comes from the increasing desire to integrate our gadgets and devices into our homes, like integrated speakers and TV’s. Unless you are willing to buy a whole new house every time you switch TV or Stereo, you will have to do some renovation to replace these devices.

Apparently people are choosing the ‘whole new house’ option, since the costs for retrofitting can be very high.

The same is happening in IT. Companies want to buy whole new systems and infrastructures, because the current ones are outdated. Unfortunately companies can’t take a few weeks off to move to a new IT infrastructure. So they are left with the only alternative; retrofitting.

To help companies with this, architects need to do two things. First they have to specify a proper replacement. This means that if a company want to replace it’s VCR, the architect has to make sure that it is replaced with a DVD player and not with another VCR, nor a CD player.

Second they have to make sure that the next replacement, let’s say from DVD to Blu-Ray, will take minimal effort. So has to make sure that removable panels are put in place when installing the DVD, but without replacing a whole wall or even the whole house. That sounds easy enough, but companies have often gotten the advice to put in an SOA architecture with a complete ESB, service adapters on all ‘legacy’ systems and a completely new user interface for the whole enterprise, when all they wanted was a new accounting application. That’s like building a removable house when installing a new DVD player.