Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture

Chapter 8. Contextual Understanding over Siloed Decision Making

Enterprise architecture principles help ensure that architecture decisions are made consistently. The first enterprise architecture principle in the very short manifesto for effective enterprise architecture is contextual understanding over siloed decision making.

Ever make a perfect architecture decision? If so, kudos on an extremely rare achievement. In my experience, architecture decisions require trade-offs, and therefore tend to be merely good enough rather than perfect.

The good enough result depends on what considerations are made during the analysis of what to trade off against. Often, the quality of an architecture decision is directly impacted by the experience and knowledge of the person who made it, and what they considered as trade-offs and implications. If trade-offs are improperly considered, the decision is at risk of being shortsighted.

Contextual understanding refers to understanding all the factors that form the problem statement and rationale of the decision, to include background, usage scenarios, assumptions, constraints, solution alternatives, and implications pertaining to the decision. Siloed decision making refers to making decisions based solely on one’s own experiences and point of view.

Here’s a real-world example. My husband and I decided to treat ourselves by not cooking for dinner. Now, if we were to make that decision in a silo, we would consider only what we like to eat, the cost ...