The Preliminary Phase of the architecture is supposed to have 4 outputs. I am outlining these below to help provide a checklist of the types of information I need to gather and some of the early decisions that need to be considered.
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- The Organizational Model for the Architecture provides a rough idea of what you have to work with:
- People
- Who is impacted
- Who we need to target for governance and decision-making around the architecture
- What roles these people play – I’m going to include support here
- Stuff
- What we have
- What we don’t have
- Constraints around what we can do to fill the gaps
- How much money we might need (though I am going into this assuming there will be NO money)
- Usually – there would also be an assessment of architectural maturity. The answer for us is “non-existent and the gap is huge and I may have potentially bitten off more than I can chew, but it’s worth a shot…..”
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- There is also a Tailored Architecture Framework. In this will be:
- What method I am using (deciding to use TOGAF. There’s other methods)
- What other methods for activities need to be used to align with the organization (I’m sure more will appear as I work on this)
- Service Management – ITIL
- Project Management – PMBOK
- Requirements Management – tbd. Could be BABOK or Volare or something else
- Templates for deliverables
- Architecture principles
- The Initial Repository (where I’m storing stuff)
- Other tools I should be using.
- Flowcharts – Visio, planning to use Archimate modeling
- MS Office
- Anything else that may come up that will help me communicate to others
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There would also be a Request for Architecture Work created by a sponsor. This document would contain high-level information on the following:
- Sponsors
- Mission statement for the architecture
- Business goals to be addressed by the architecture
- Strategic plans for the business
- Time limits
- Changes and challenges in the business environment triggering this architecture
- Constraints – internal and external
- Budget constraints and information
- Current business system description
- Current IT system architecture description
- Description of the developing organization and the resources available
I may still write one of these up. More for my own reference and to serve as a template if I am able to get a sponsor that’s not me.
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The Architecture Definition Document defines what this architecture / ecosystem IS.
This will be written after the other three documents are at least in draft form.
- Scope of the architecture – in my case, “Learning / Teaching activities”
- Goals, objectives and constraints for the architecture. This would be defined in the Request for Architecture work.
- Architecture principles – how I’m basing decisions for the Target (future-state) architecture
- Baseline architecture
- The architecture models, for each iteration of the future state
- The rationale and justification for the approach -why I’m using TOGAF instead of Zachman or some other architecture model
- The mapping of the Architecture Repository – where it is, table of contents, how to categorize stuff, how to find stuff
- Gap analysis – what needs to happen to go from point A to point B
- Impact assessment – what we think will happen if we manage to be successful
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None of these documents will be final at this point.
I personally see it as more of a checklist….
- Do I have everything I need to answer these questions?
- Have I thought of everything that may apply to the architecture?
- Is the definition of my scope accurate and clearly delineated?
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