First Architecture, than Technology

First Architecture, than Technology

I've had a really good time during my tenure at UNCOMN over the last six plus years. I have always tried to understand a business or organization I worked on before I made technology recommendations. UNCOMN has opened my eyes to the budgetary and fiscal strategies employed by organizations while making hard business decisions. This is reflected in our overall approach to solving problems at UNCOMN. We put the business first. Next, we think about technology.

We leverage business architecture tools to help define and demonstrate what it is a business does to create value for their customers. UNCOMN is exceptional at business architecture having built up a practice of over fifty business architects through our work with the Department of Defense. Our architects are built from a foundation of the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (you can see how its defined below), and have developed artifacts supporting some of the most complicated and integrated systems I have ever dealt with in my twenty-plus year career.

In addition to our expertise in DODAF, we practice common sense approaches when developing architecture artifacts for our customers. These approaches have been perfected in commercial settings as we work outside of the DOD with some of the leading businesses in St. Louis. In particular, we have found entity relationship and swim lane diagrams can be very powerful and not require you leverage a heavy architecture approach.

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Not Waterfall

In todays world of Agile, failing fast, and "what have you done for me lately", architecture feels like it could be a blast from the past; potentially, dare I say, like waterfall (gasp!). But its not. We can build architecture artifacts just as fast and as you want to go. In fact, in a typical engagement, our architects sit in a small conference room and whiteboard out the artifact as the customer talks about it. An hour or two later, you have a fully flushed out reusable architecture artifact.

Leveraged correctly, architecture is the story of your company or organization. It documents how you create value for your customers. From a high-level down to a detail-level, architecture provides knowledge of the "why" we are doing things into the "how" we are doing it. Here we define processes, understand gaps, and apply people and how they are responsible during operation. Why is this important? Because businesses exist to serve customers and technology should be an enabling function of that purpose. An architecture artifact lives on and on until the process, function, or person it represents changes.  

Applying Architecture to Optimize Your Business

How many times have you felt like you are being held hostage by your ERP? Do you have your architecture defined? In many cases, we have found that no or poor architecture documentation led to the poor configuration of an ERP. Take a step back, properly document how your business works, apply that to the ERP, and you can make huge advancements in productivity.  

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What about a major technology shift? Are you getting ready to move to the cloud? Maybe you are already on the way. Proper architecture can help shape the technology needs to include how long and how often systems or processes function. Cloud is awesome, but configured poorly it can cost a bundle to operate in. Many companies take for granted they own their own hardware, so running it twenty-four hours a day does not make a significant impact on the bottom line. In many cases, systems businesses are using, really only operate during business hours. Shift that system to the cloud, run it 24/7, and all of a sudden we have a fiscal crisis! Good architecture would allow you to understand how that system functions, when it functions, and can help establish an operating baseline that can save you a lot of money when you move to the cloud.

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What about cybersecurity? What if you got hacked?  Good architecture can help with that. Systems View 1 (SV-1) shows a high level interaction of systems in your organization. Want to drill down further? Systems View 2 (SV-2) shows you the communications protocols used by the systems to talk. Within minutes you can determine how a breach may have spread through your network.

Summary

Bottom line is that many companies and organizations tend to let the new sexy technology dictate business decisions that in many cases, take years to implement, and on the other end, didn't really create the value that was expected. Taking an architecture-first approach can help you realize that the technology you already have is not implemented correctly, help you migrate your systems to a new technology solution that works, or even justify the reduction or consolidation of systems.  By incorporating an architecture-first approach, you are committing ensuring there is an enterprise understanding which in itself creates a foundation of trust.

In the end, when making a business decision that spends real money and has a real impact on your organization, architecture needs to be the first thing you think about prior to a technology solutioning or purchase.

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