Learning the right experience of the others
Human is the only creature with the gift to learn experience of the others, but it is also human nature in declining to do so.In silo culture, there is no need to learn expereicne of the others.
"Only the foolish learn from experience — the wise learn from the experience of others." — Attributed to Romanian folk wisdom by Rolf Hochhuth. The Light Enterprise Architecture (LEA) suggests to establish the common foundation and building blocks by learning the experience of the others . There is nothing new under the sun []. The key for the engineering of reuse is to learn experience of the others rather than conducting pattern recognition by jumping through the hoops to designing a large scale system. It is an effort to make it simple rather than contributing the complexity and profundity. EA is the effort to establish common foundation and building blocks to enable simplicity and agility by learning experience of the others.
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The design framework
3.4 The EA design approach frameworkThe EA design framework describe the EA design concept and processes. EA design approach describe the architecture design process which subject to customization such as the popular Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) approach by Dr. Spewak, the Open group approach , the Practical Guide for Federal Enterprise Architecture approach, the Meta Group approach and the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework approach. Take the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework for example :
In September 1999, the Federal CIO Council published the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework, Version 1.1 for developing an EA within any Federal Agency or for a system that transcends multiple inter-agency boundaries. It builds on common business practices and designs that cross organizational boundaries. The FEAF (As shown in Figure 6) , provides an enduring standard for developing and documenting architecture descriptions of high-priority areas. It provides guidance in describing architectures for multi-organizational functional segments of the Federal Government. These Federal architectural segments collectively constitute the Federal EA. It partitions a given architecture into business, data, applications, and technology architectures
For the Federal Enterprise, the Federal CIO Council seeks to develop, maintain, and facilitate the implementation of a top-level EA predicated upon the FEAF. This architecture serves as a reference point to facilitate the efficient and effective coordination of common business processes, technology insertion, information flows, systems, and investments among Federal Agencies. The FEAF provides a structure to develop, maintain, and implement top-level operating environments and support implementation of IT systems.
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Bottom up via learning experiences of the others
4.0 Bottom up via learning experiences of the others on common foundationThe business oriented reuse approach enable to predict the enterprise’s common foundation based on their line of business without the delay of water fall analysis. It justify the reality of bottom up solution which is not a direct contest to the top down principle in which business drive IT.
The subject of top down or bottom has always a intrigue topic for discussion in the IT community. There is no doubt that , in theory , Business drives IT solution instead of the other way around. However, in realty, bottom up solution does not go away as you wish. On the contrary, it is gaining momentum such as the Services Oriented Architecture.
The popular bottom up solution by many software developers are not a direct contest to the theory of business drive IT. Rather, there are practicing a thin top down concept to learn the experience from the others. Knowing that there is nothing new under the sun
, they are able to predict the common IT foundation and building blocks from repeatable IT solution patterns from the similar lines of business without conducting redundant patter recognition effort over and over again. This is only true for the common foundations but not for the solution because foundations are common but solution are unique for every enterprise. An enterprise need the common foundation for agility and they also need uniqueness of identity to exist.
The thin top down approach leverage on the IBM patterns approach but it is not a redundant effort. It is a effort from the aspect of Enterprise Architecture rather than from the aspect of application development as it is in the IBM patterns for e-business. The thin top down approach only intend to establish the enterprise common foundation rather than provide a complete solution. It incorporates the associate data patterns which is overlooked in the IBM patterns.
4.1 Predict the common foundation from similar line of business
4.2 Service oriented architecture is a bottom up solution
5.0 Bottom up is the illusion of thin top down
Although, SOA appears to be a bottom up solution, it is a matter of fat top down or thin top down which is defined as
A thin top down approach learn the experience of IT solution patterns from the similar line of business to predict the common IT foundation, services and building blocks without conducting redundant pattern recognition effort which requires significant time and effort”
EA is the discipline to learn from the others. It is not a human nature to learn from the other’s experience. The wisdom from king Solomon in the Bible said that “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun “ (Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV). Put aside the religious aspect, this is true then and it is true now.
A thin top down approach learn the experience of IT solution from the similar line of business to predict the common IT foundation, services and building blocks without conducting redundant pattern recognition effort to identify the common foundation and services. For example : The IBM business patterns.
5.1 The Water fall solution
A fat top down is stove pipe oriented without learning the experience from the others. It is a water fall approach where the up stream must be full before comes down. Therefore to establish common foundation, services and building blocks, the enterprise must analyze the entire business and conduct pattern recognition to identify the commonality from scratch as if no one have done it before. However, there is nothing new under the sun as king Solomon says people are reluctant to learn from the experience from the other. The traditional EA approaches such as EAP is stove pipe oriented EA approach
5.2 The thin top down
The term of “Thin top down” is suggested to indicate that this is a top down approach to align IT with business. But it is a thin top down approach compare to the traditional waterfall approach. The Thin top down approach enable the enterprise architects to establish the enterprise IT common foundation with minimum effort an in time for practical use. It does not requires significant effort and time to determine the business area of the enterprise and the LOBs in the enterprise.
6.0 THE THIN TOP DOWN APPROACH
This approach align IT to business based on the LOBs in the enterprise.
Pattern analysis has been the industry solution for the engineering of reuse, many reusable general patterns have been established by the industry, the government and business segments. Instead of reinvent the wheel to perform pattern recognition within the enterprise in a stove pipe approach, LEA suggest to leverage on established patterns from industry, government or other institutions.
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