Incremental Software Architecture

Chapter 7End-State Architecture Structural Decomposition through Classification

When an end-state enterprise architecture is proposed and put on the table for feasibility assessment, the task of understanding what it is all about begins. If the architecture is complex, perhaps most stakeholders will have difficulty comprehending what the proposed solutions of the architecture are. In most cases, the inability to decipher the design puzzle leads to deployment delays that cannot be compensated for. This is commonly attributed to a lack of a methodological process to break down a distributed environment and understand how business goals are being attained.

Another struggle to overcome is the nature of architecture heterogeneity. In different words, this term indicates that an end-state architecture is not simple. In fact, nothing is simple or straightforward when it comes to decrypting the language of enterprise architecture. Design heterogeneity means that an end-state architecture proposition may be composed of many patterns and styles, some of which have been devised many years ago. Other formations are being studied as we speak. And many more have not been discovered yet.

So the language of an enterprise design comes with a complex vocabulary that perhaps no one before has ever encountered. The conclusion may be disappointing to those who expect to find a clear and generic category of an end-state architecture. But more discouraging is the fact that an architecture of such ...