Service Orient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business

CHAPTER 7

Is There an Architect in the House?

Now that we have all the raw materials that we need to build agile IT systems, what's the next step? If we simply think about building complicated systems by looking at their individual components, it would be like building a house with the materials we have lying around. Just because we have some wood, glass, nails, and bricks doesn't mean we know how to put them all together to build what we want. Sure, we might be able to build simple things like doghouses or maybe even a shed by just pulling together the various materials, but what if you wanted to build something more complex, such as a house or an office building? Well then, you'd better have a plan. A plan, however, will take you only so far. You also need the expertise and the discipline to follow the plan.

NEW DISCIPLINE OF ARCHITECTURE

The building construction analogy is a natural one, because the world of IT has borrowed the word architecture from that trade to refer to this combination of a plan and the discipline to follow it. Just as you would go to an architect to create a plan for your house or office building, so too would you go to an IT architect to help you design a solution to your specific business needs. An architect, after all, is concerned primarily with giving you what you want and helping you plan for ongoing change and growth. So too with IT, where an architect can help you plan whatever IT project you have in mind, as long as the project is important ...