icehusk blog

A famous sculptor was asked how he makes such realistic sculptures. He said 'I do not make them I merely remove the unnecessary pieces from the rock'.  Design is often looked upon as an innovation that was created without any constraints. It seldom is the case. Where there is a good design there is bound to be a set of constraints imposed on the system.  When traversing the design approach as an architect I find business operating model lays the first level system constraint followed by the data that is required to effectively run the business processes associated with the operating model. The data needs determine the applications that need to be put in place. The applications determine the infrastructure requirements. So, the design constraints imposed by the business, process, data and application define the design of IT systems and infrastructure. It might also happen that infrastructure puts constrains on the business model. This is when business design is constrained b...

An interesting interplay of Constraints and Decisions occur when an Enterprise Architect navigates through the Business, Data, Application and Technology architecture domains.  Picture this: While there is plenty of options, business wants to bet on a certain horse for competitive advantage. A Decision and an initial Constraint are created. This is a decision articulated by a Business Architect. (the suffix is optional. it could be your business head making this decision). E.g., Go Public cloud for B2B processes The Business Architecture (BA) decision acts as a 'constraint' for the data architect who then makes business Data decisions within this boundary without compromising architectural viewpoints. E.g., Public and Transaction data goes on the public cloud; Private and Sensitive data in a Private cloud. Likewise, an Application Architect (AA) ensures alignment to constraints above and makes decisions among the business application options without compromising on a...