Frederick Vanbrabant's Delirious Rantings

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"What’s In It For Me" Architecture

People , Strategy

I recently read the quote, ‘The best architecture that isn’t implemented is just an expensive drawing,’ and I couldn’t agree more. I wish I came up with it. When organisations hire for architecture roles they always look for extremely technical and knowledgeable people. While it is true that you need deep technical knowledge to set up large-scale architecture outlines, it’s all worthless if you can’t convince people to actually implement it.

Governance: Documentation to support projects

Managing information , Enterprise architecture

Two weeks ago I wrote an article about governance and documentation on an organisational scale. This is the follow-up post that focuses on the project scale. You could just read this post, but it’s probably better that you start with the previous one first The biggest problem with documentation is that nobody just sits down to write it all out. And I also think that’s the wrong way to go about it. You can’t just give someone the task of ‘starting to write whatever needs to be written’. You will never cover the important parts.

Governance: Documentation as a Knowledge Network

Managing information , Enterprise architecture

If you’ve known me for long enough, there will be a point where I’m going to pitch you the concept of Obsidian. I adore that program1, I basically live my life in it. Everything is connected, and ideas just bubble up on their own. That love for Obsidian is always amplified when I have to look up something on an organisational documentation platform. I can never find anything, it’s always out of date, and it has conflicting ideas all over the place. I’m pretty sure you can relate (if you even have one).

Systems Thinking in Enterprise Architecture

Strategy , Enterprise architecture , Managing information

I first learned of systems thinking in the domain of city planning, and that is apparently also where the idea comes from. It was described to me in the context of building new residential buildings and effects on local bird populations. Birds don’t always perceive glass clearly, especially when it’s a tall apartment building and on their flight path. So there are birds that think they can pass under an arch, yet instead fly straight into a glass wall.

The middle ground between canonical models and data mesh

Enterprise architecture , Managing information , Organizational layer

Some years ago I worked with a scale-up that was really focused on the way they handled data in their product. They extensively argued over data language, had value objects everywhere, explicit models and, even hexagonal architecture. It was a cool place to work, with a lot of smart people. At some point they started to talk about standardizing their data transfer objects, the data that flows over the API connections, in these common models. The idea was that there would be a single Invoice, User, Customer concept that they can document, standardize and share over their entire application landscape.

The death of the enterprise service bus was greatly exaggerated

Enterprise architecture , Application layer , Infrastructure

Every six months or so I read a post on sites like Hackernews that the enterprise service bus concept is dead and that it was a horrible concept to begin with. Yet I personally have great experiences with them, even in large, messy enterprise landscapes. I would go even further and say that I see a resurgence in their usage in big enterprises. Even companies that moved away from them seem to have a renewed appetite. Sometimes they are rebranded as integration platforms / iPaaS, but they are still very much the thing under the hood.

Bring back opinionated architecture

Solution architecture , Managing technology , Organizational layer

Before my end-of-year holiday break, I received an email 1 from someone who read my post about “Choosing your starting line in enterprise architecture”. Mark asked me what I meant by the line: So yes, you can map the AS-IS. You can design the TO-BE. You can even claim you’re doing both, which is the classic architect escape hatch.

What is a Value Stream and how does it relate to a Value Chain

Enterprise architecture , Strategy layer , Strategy

Organizations often use “value stream” and “value chain” as interchangeable labels. It’s not the biggest architectural drama in the world, but it’s still something that always annoys me a little. We as architects might actually be to blame for this. We keep on coming up with related concepts that are very close to each other and then naming them ever so slightly differently.

Choosing your starting line in enterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture , Business layer , Strategy layer

I’ve been part of the creation of five enterprise architecture offices in my life. Some I’ve led, others I’ve simply been part of. If you start up an enterprise architecture office, you have two types of strategies people use. Some people start by mapping everything that exists, in whatever state it happens to be. They then assess what they have and start building a gap analysis towards a better, more uniform state.

The CMDB as an architecture source

Enterprise architecture , Managing information , Managing technology

Every company that I’ve helped start their enterprise architecture practice so far, always tell me that they might not have architecture setup yet, but they do have a ton of information in the CMDB that we can use to kickstart the exercise. The CMDB is our source of truth of all the applications, servers, and it’s all linked to service lines and capabilities. Furthermore, it’s maintained by a team and it’s fully ITIL aligned. It’s a treasure trove!