Rewired

Chapter 17Decoupled architecture for development flexibility and operational scalability

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

—Winston Churchill

A platform architecture supports systems of engagement (front end) and systems of record (back end) as well as the data and analytics needed to develop solutions and drive the digital and AI transformation. The best architectures provide flexibility, stability, and speed so that agile pods throughout the organization can build the solutions needed to deliver the digital roadmap. The key concept here is that a distributed and decoupled architecture is needed to enable teams to assemble modular and reusable components (see Exhibit 17.1).

EXHIBIT 17.1

An enterprise architecture team decides on the overarching architecture design philosophies and choices for all agile pods within the enterprise, as well as the engineering practices those agile pods need to follow.

Enabling this kind of architecture requires you to embrace the cloud as your technology foundation (more on this in Chapter 18) and drive the following four key shifts in how it operates:

From point-to-point to decoupled

From an architecture perspective, decoupling (literally separating connections between points in one system and another) enables an organization to evolve its applications independently from one another, thus improving the organization's ...