What reference architecture models to adopt

Editor's Notes

• #2: This is the second presentation in a three part series: Why Reshape Reference Architecture What Reference Architecture Models make sense today How to Reshape Reference Architecture
• #3: The first presentation in this series (Why Reshape Reference Architecture) describes why IT must change reference architecture. Important transformative drivers include: The Now Generation Connected Business Demands Complex Requirements The Long Tail Web 3.0 http://blog.cobia.net/cobiacomm/2013/04/25/new-enterprise-drivers/
• #4: To meet business demand and expectations, IT must become more responsive and effective. Often outdated processes, tools, and skills inhibit IT’s ability to be a strategic enabler and gain an IT business edge.  By adopting a new, Responsive IT delivery model, teams can foster effective business collaboration, responsive iterations, streamlined processes, and no wait states; enabling business to operate at the speed of now.  By changing the business-IT dynamic through an innovation focus, business stakeholders start to view IT as a strategic partner. http://blog.cobia.net/cobiacomm/2013/05/02/new-it-model/
• #5: Often outdated processes, tools, and skills inhibit IT’s ability to be a strategic enabler and gain an IT business edge.  By adopting a new, Responsive IT delivery model, teams can foster effective business collaboration, responsive iterations, streamlined processes, and no wait states; enabling business to operate at the speed of now.  By changing the business-IT dynamic through an innovation focus, business stakeholders start to view IT as a strategic partner. The next logical question is ‘What reference architecture goal-state is required to meet business demands and expectations? Image courtesy: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?140691-The-Official-Atwood-collectors-thread/page7
• #6: Some architects view reference architecture as connecting distinct technology disciplines. For example, creating a platform by connecting social, mobile, cloud, big data, governance, integration, security, and APIs. While this high level view is not inaccurate, it does not connect the what to the why.
• #7: To become a connected business, your business requires a connected business architecture.  Connected business architecture centers around the business activity that drives business revenue, effective sales, streamlined manufacturing, and excellent customer support. IT teams are partnering with their core business counterparts to map activities, define key business events, and establish business-oriented workspaces that incorporate business activity streams.  This slide describes a logical connected business architecture. A connected business architecture enables access by mobile devices and cloud services.  A connected business architecture flexibly integrates Software as a Service (SaaS) through connectors and Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). Connected business architecture centers around the business activity that drives business revenue, effective sales, streamlined manufacturing, and excellent customer support.   By taking a business activity first perspective, teams focus on optimizing the core business, and every IT project is placed within a business context.   Business activity correlates with the transactions, data, events, and user interfaces necessary to  fulfill a business process or collaborative interaction. Business activity is often not static, or follow a linear path.  A connected business architecture must adapt to new market events, supply chain disruptions, and demand spikes.   A connected business architecture will include event processing and a flexible business process engine that can execute remediation actions and capitalize on market opportunity. Effected connected business collaboration requires workspaces where individuals can work together on a project, and dashboards providing visibility into business actions and business performance.  Workspaces and dashboards should not just display static report information, but link to business processes  driving business activity forward. To learn more about connected business architecture, read: Connected Business Transformation Connected Business Attributes   Connected Business Architecture   Realizing Connected Business Architecture
• #8: The path to Responsive IT requires incrementally moving away from traditional application platforms, traditional team structure, and traditional information flows.  The Responsive IT architecture underlying Responsive IT intelligently incorporates Cloud Platforms, BigData Analytics, Enterprise DevOps, and API first development.
• #9: When defining a roadmap to align IT’s pace with business agility expectations, establish IT team objectives that quicken IT solution development and delivery, offer new technology as on-demand shared services, and enhance your team’s ability to rapidly satisfy emerging business use cases (e.g. social collaboration, mobile application connectivity, ecosystem partnering). Open source PaaS, Open APIs, and Open Ecosystems are accelerating agility, empowering developers, and enabling innovative business strategies.  In a recently published white paper, I describe how adopting a New IT plan can create a responsive IT team.
• #10: A reference architecture should not be a single mold forcing your solution requirements into a one-size-fits-all form factor. Your reference architecture (and underlying infrastructure platform) must deliver composability, and let your solution architects mix and match components based on functional and non-functional requirements. In a Responsive IT operations model, instead of being a single-purpose delivery team, IT Enterprise Architecture serves as a broker and validator of solution building blocks.  IT focus and responsibility shifts towards creating an ecosystem delivering composable and reusable IT capabilities.  Project teams can access open APIs, services, business processes, open data, and applications to compose the assets into new solutions.  The operations model safely shifts the center of project responsibility to project individuals and business units while maintaining IT as a more valued business partner.  IT maintains responsibility for policy compliance, serves as a trusted technology advisor, and mentors teams on IT capability usage.  Corporate IT delivers solution accelerator packs that decrease time to market, reduce development hurdles, and cost effectively implements corporate policy.
• #11: Your reference architecture must be complete and cohesive.
• #12: Your reference architecture must provide a decision framework that helps solution architects decide when to include platform components into the solutions architecture.
• #13: While most reference architectures address typical IT business use-cases, they often fail to deliver accelerator packs that make best practices, governance, security, and management easy to adopt. Successful architecture teams mentor project teams and facilitate architecture adoption.