How do you design a solution architecture that is easy to maintain, extend, and reuse?

Defining clear requirements is core to a solid solution architecture.Requirement Elicitation is crucial as often, business or technical needs are in stakeholders' minds and not documented. As TOGAF highlights, using methods like interviews and workshops in every iteration helps capture realistic functional and non-functional requirements. Tools like Requirement Management Software aid in organizing and tracking these details. Incorrectly captured requirements can lead to misaligned solutions and higher costs. In my experience,Revalidating requirements at each ADM phase ensures alignment with evolving goals.

1. Modularity: The system that has clear interfaces, internal complexities. 2. Documentation: Thoroughly document code and module interactions. 3. Design Principle: Use established design principle to solve problems 4. Standardization and Consistency: Enforce coding standards and use frameworks, version control. 5. Scalability and Performance: Design for scalability to maintain efficiency. 6. Configurability: Make the system configurable. 7. Deployment: Pipelines to automate the build, test, and deployment process. 8. Testing: Implement automated unit, integration, and regression testing 9. Reviews: To maintain code quality, best practices, and knowledge sharing 10. Error Handling: To identify and address issues, ensuring system stability.

One very important but often overlooked aspect about requirements gathering is the actual source from where they emanate. In my experience, in large enterprises, it becomes challenging to trace back the exact business problem that a given requirement tries to solve. Sometimes user requirements are tied to legacy way of work and unless probed further for currency and fitment, they become very hard to deal with later and pose a challenge for the implementation teams down the line.

This is the primary requirement. Once you have defined requirements. You can look in to decoupling/modular approaches to the architecture to make it simple and easy to manage. None of this can happen without a deep dive in to the requirements of the project/solution

Certainly! Maintaining equilibrium between clear, realistic requirements and agile development involves stakeholder engagement, prioritizing needs, iterative development with continuous communication, flexibility, documentation, thorough testing, feedback loops, empowering teams, regular reviews, embracing proof of concept (POC) to validate ideas, and being open to calculated risk-taking. This balance necessitates staying flexible, collaborating effectively, and delivering value incrementally while exploring innovative solutions and managing risks proactively.

Before running with architecting the solution, one must first fully understand the context. For example: - Understand the functional and non-functional requirements, obviously. - Understand the data, integration needs - Understand the Enterprise environment in which the solution will be placed. Identity and Access management, logging needs, security standards, appointed technologies, policies ...etc. - Understand the how often the solution will be updated/modified/enhanced. - Existence of legacy solution that need to be modernized, if any. Consider these to make decisions on design patterns, decoupling, technology, tools ..etc.?There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution. A good architecture is one that perfectly fits the need.

While modular design makes a great sense, one should take extra care in not over doing it. At one end is a monolithic software design that makes maintenance a nightmare while at the other end is microservices architecture that introduces its own challenges in terms of increased complexity. Solution architecture is a fine balancing act then between these two extreme ends. One principle that helps in striking a right balance is to think in terms of dataflows and define system boundaries such that it makes business sense if dataflows ran independently within a single system without too much dependence on and integration with other systems.

The effectiveness of modular and decoupled design depends on the system's specific needs. Striking a balance between decoupling and complexity is crucial. Highly decoupled architectures may not be optimal for smaller, performance-critical systems. Conversely, for large, complex systems needing scalability and flexibility, a more modular approach is beneficial. In practice, architects often blend architectural styles, finding a middle ground that optimizes modularity's benefits while mitigating drawbacks. This involves leveraging decoupling strategically and favoring simpler solutions when complexity may outweigh the benefits.

Today's enterprises are spoilt for choices when it comes to choosing technologies. Thanks to public cloud providers and constant innovations, these technologies are becoming readily available at a competitive rate as well. An approach that does not lock in technology and still leverages competitive pricing should be employed.

Standard and proven technologies offer reliability, stability, and community support, ensuring interoperability and reduced risk while adhering to best practices. However, they might limit innovation, face potential obsolescence, and provide rigid, less customizable solutions. Balancing involves a hybrid approach—leveraging established tech for stability while exploring innovative solutions for specific needs, fostering both reliability and innovation through a tailored, adaptive tech strategy.

The use of feedback and validation in solutions design fosters a user-centric approach, minimizing the risk of errors and ensuring that the final product meets the expectations of stakeholders. This approach ultimately leads to more successful and effective solutions that cater to the specific needs and preferences of the intended user base.

Incorporating feedback and validation is vital as it ensures continuous improvement, alignment with stakeholder needs, and the validation of chosen strategies. It enables adjustments based on real-world experiences and ensures that implemented solutions meet evolving requirements. This practice fosters a responsive, adaptive environment where technology choices, design principles, and architectural strategies can be refined, validated, and optimized for better outcomes and increased effectiveness.

Here are some things that I can think of on how to adopt iterative and agile approach in solution architecture: - Don't try to define the entire solution architecture in detail upfront. Start with a high-level vision and then refine it as you learn more about the requirements, the technical landscape, and the needs of the stakeholders. - Break down the solution into smaller, manageable pieces. This will make it easier to develop and test the solution in an iterative way. - Use a variety of techniques to gather feedback and iterate on the solution. This could include demos, user testing, and surveys. -Change direction if necessary if you discover that the original vision is no longer feasible or desirable. Change is constant. Adapt to it.

Adopting an iterative and agile approach is essential in solution architecture. It involves engaging stakeholders early, prioritizing requirements, and employing modular, decoupled designs to enhance scalability and flexibility. Incorporating standard technologies ensures reliability, stability, and community support, while a hybrid approach allows for innovation and customization. Continuous feedback and validation loops are crucial for adapting to evolving needs and refining strategies. This iterative and agile methodology promotes responsiveness, adaptability, and the delivery of high-quality, user-centric solutions by embracing change, fostering collaboration, and ensuring alignment with stakeholders throughout the development process.

Reusable assets encourage collaboration among development teams, fostering knowledge sharing and a culture of reusability within the organization. This collaborative environment can lead to the creation of a repository of best practices and reusable components, benefiting future projects and initiatives.

In my opinion, the following factors should be considered when assessing to reuse - Suitability: Is the asset suitable for your new solution? Does it meet the requirements of your new solution in terms of functionality, performance, security, and other factors? Talk to your team member if they have any suggestions. Compatibility: Is the asset compatible with your existing systems and technologies? Look for common patterns. Quality: Is it well-designed, well-tested, and well-documented? It is a popular asset to solve similar problems? Every organization should catalog their existing, commonly reusable assets.

What I have experienced, there are few more points to consider here. 1. Security architecture- This is very important aspect with growing cloud adoption and multiple third party integration needs. This also should cover any compliance requirements which are mandatory. 2. Performance - the architecture should support the required SLA 3. Exception handling - No matter how much time we spend to create a robust architecture, there will always be surprises and new scenarios in production world. So the architecture should take care of handling errors, alerting as required and logging the adequate details for analysis. Restart ability, retry mechanism should be built in during initial blueprints.

If you work for a company whose focus is industry specific (healthcare, pharmacy, etc) then the majority of the business needs/requirements are going to leverage market leading solutions built for purpose in the SaaS market (Procurement, Contracting, HCM, ATS, etc.), but there will be some scenarios that will still exist where the need to develop in-house technologies makes sense like data analytics/reporting, internal services, and even AI. If the above is true for you then the Solution Architecture is more about integration and following best practices for bringing in external platforms to your organization. Also each new solution needs to align with your orgs enterprise strategy especially if there is a conscious move to the cloud.

KISS approach (keep-it-simple-stupid) is useful in designing solution architecture that easy to maintain, extend and re-use. Consider using application, tools and technologies aligned with existing capabilities to build and maintain the solution. Avoid over-engineering and use only proven and reliable technologies for critical parts of the solution.