Architecture directive

The topic which enterprise architects are working on is architecture management. This is a standing locution. Do we really know the meaning of the two words? Let's look behind the scenes and define properly what we are speaking about! The article uses common definitions of architecture and management then interprets the management functionalities from architects point of view.

The exception proves the rule. I do not want to argue about this statement but I'd like to understand how exceptions behave and when they show that something is bad. This train of thought will be about principles and processes we are closed around. Certainly the principles mean architecture principles in this portal and the processes are mostly those ones, which you find around the architecture management: orders, development change requests, infrastructure changes and so.

The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.

Sun Tzu: The art of war

What should it mean in the field of architecture management? What to divide and how? How to keep control about a large Enterprise Architecture? Finally the recipe is the same as for war forces: you need an organisation, a kind of "command hierarchy" which enables the appropriate control over the entire Enterprise Architecture. This is the first part of a series about preparing Architecture Management Directive, which was one of the topic selected by you in the What would you like to read more? questionnaire.

The first part of preparing architecture directive discusses how to set up the architect's virtual organisation. This article gives you the details of functional and virtual roles played by architects, which will be the basis of the next chapter, the decision making mechanism.

Beyond the Domain and Enterprise Architect roles that was introduced before, here you will meat a new, the Lead Architect.

The third part of the series about architecure management directive. It shows the teams you have to organise and the mechanisms to operate to reach ideal point of transparent and clear decisions and rationales. The roles you see can be found in TOGAF while the processes are following the main disciplines of democratic voting.

If you never met this question you are living somewhere else but not in the IT industry! Here I collected some practical examples you may refer to when facing the question in the title. Here at the start my position about rules and principles: freedom is made by great rules and this is a basement to maximise ability to change! This article is the continuation of Rules and exceptions article.