enterprise solution architecture

In my IT career, I got opportunities to work with software architects who were kind enough the talk about their secrets. Being an evergreen noob 😆, I keep on asking them stupid questions which gives me some insights about what happens on the architecture side.

In this article, I’m going to share, the pieces of information I have gathered about enterprise solution architecture.

What is enterprise solution architecture?

The process of managing, designing, and architecting all the technical and operational solutions to solve specific business requirements in an organization is known as Enterprise solution architecture.

Enterprise solution architecture includes integrating existing solutions and processes, based on organization requirements and rules. 

In enterprise software architecture we are talking about two things! Enterprise architecture and Solution architecture. Enterprise architecture talks about the strategic context of the overall system whereas Solution Architecture talks about the development, scalability, and maintainability of the technical solution. These two together bridge the gap between the business requirement and the technological implementation.

Best practices to follow

Enterprise solution architecture means a structured approach toward the problem statement, keeping the solution scalable, maintainable, and well-documented at the same time. Some best practices for designing enterprise solution architecture are as follows:

  1. Understand the business strategy:  To provide a good solution you need to understand the business strategy first. Once properly understood you can provide solutions that are properly aligned with the business prospects.
  2. Develop a decision and communications plan: Even before starting your execution, you should plan the overall solution and outline the processes. Then have a review with the company personnel and the stakeholders so that you can incorporate the changes requested very easily.
  3. Treat each iteration of the plan like a project: A good architect will never plan the solution as a whole. So you need the plan in pieces. Just by this, you can make things more modular, deliverable, and robust.
  4. Adopt an iterative and agile approach: To ensure continuous delivery, integration, and feedback-based adaptability you need to use any agile methodology such as Scrum, Kanban, or Feature-driven development, etc.
  5. Embrace change and innovation: You need to be open to change requests and innovations. By adopting modern solution architectures, you will be able to accomplish your goal much more quickly!
  6. Leverage existing and reusable assets: Architecting the solution does not mean, creating each and everything from scratch! You do not need to reinvent the wheel if you have an existing utility, that can be used to create your solution, then just go for it! Such utilities could be an API, dataset, infrastructure setup, or reusable components.
  7. Minimize dependencies between layers: Even though you are developing the solution in a modular pattern, still you need to make sure that, you are not making the modules or layers too dependent on each other otherwise it could be problematic in terms of scalability and maintainability.
  8. Isolate end-user services: What you are doing in the background is one thing, but what you are doing in the foreground is important as well. The way you make sure, things are modular in the background, in the same way, you need to make sure services are isolated from each other at the presentation layer.
  9. Maximize reusability: The way we want to use the existing solutions to our system, maybe others in the future would like to do the same with our solution right? So we need to design our product as reusable as we can. If feasible we can utilize any of such reusable components in our next project.
  10. Implement governance and compliance: You need to set up a compliance framework so that the solution you build adheres to the organizational policies and standards.

Common mistakes to avoid

When crafting enterprise solution architecture, you as an architect need to avoid common mistakes, that will cause misalignment, buggy, and often inefficient systems!

  1. Misaligning efforts with business needs: To use existing systems and their functionalities, architects may get distracted from their objectives. So you need to know if you are aligned you the project needs or not! If using some reusable component or solution leads to changes that distract the objective, stay away from it, unless it is irreplaceable.
  2. Neglecting to centralize core goals and capabilities: It is somewhat similar to the above point, but the thing is, at the very beginning the the project, organizations do set some expectations from the application. During the development of the project, you will face situations where you may neglect the core goals and capabilities. It may lead to a missed requirement and an unsatisfactory end product.
  3. Not adopting customer-centricity: All the other factors are fine, but your customer point of view always stays competitive in the market right? If you do not adopt customer-centric designs or feature requests the product may lose competitiveness.
  4. Working with low-quality data: There is a saying in the IT world, more garbage in more garbage out. Meaning, that the output of your software depends on how good your inputs were! You should always do your best to collect the best up-to-date datasets as applicable!
  5. Failing to communicate across the organization: During the development of the solution, you need to communicate within the organization keeping alignment with the personnel and software expectations.
  6. Over-complicating the solution: Being a tech-savvy myself I can understand, how tempting it is when you find new ways to solve some problem. But the thing is, the solution you have found may be super cool and super efficient but at the same time it needs to have enough reasons for which you want to use it! If you do not have justifiable reasoning you should not go for it! 
  7. Not documenting the solution: I believe the battle is it’s always you vs your terrible code right? During the development, of the business logic, I know it and God knows it, after one month, only God knows it 😆. What I’m trying to say here is, that documenting your stuff is a must! You will forget things after some time also those who will maintain the system later on will appreciate your documentation!
  8. Not considering scalability: Make sure you always keep scalability in mind! Scalability will allow you to expand your system in the future, if your system is not future-ready, your efforts will go in veins. Maybe you or someone else will again start building a similar solution that will allow upscale it.
enterprise solution architecture | Enterprise Solution Architecture: 18 points to keep in mind

Conclusion

By avoiding these common mistakes and adopting the best practices, you can create a well-designed enterprise solution architecture that aligns with the business objectives, is scalable, maintainable, and aligns with their overall strategy.

But it depends on the situation. There is no hard and fast rule. The thing you need is experience to judge the situation and choose the right solutions! It may seem unfit but the architect knows what the reasoning he/she has for the decision.

References

  1. https://www.cio.com/article/302043/7-enterprise-architecture-mistakes-to-avoid.html
  2. https://content.ardoq.com/enterprise-architecture-mistakes
  3. https://www.qentelli.com/thought-leadership/insights/9-enterprise-architecture-mistakes-organizations-must-avoid
  4. https://www.ardoq.com/blog/how-to-avoid-enterprise-architecture-mistakes
  5. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/08/12/common-software-architecture-mistakes/
  6. https://www.ardoq.com/blog/enterprise-architecture-vs-solution-architecture
  7. https://www.thousandeyes.com/learning/techtorials/enterprise-architecture
  8. https://www.mendix.com/blog/best-practices-for-enterprise-application-architecture/
  9. https://www.linkedin.com/advice/3/how-do-you-design-solution-architecture-easy
  10. https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/enterprise-architecture
  11. https://www.leanix.net/en/wiki/ea/enterprise-architect-vs-solution-architect-vs-technical-architect-whats-the-difference
  12. https://www.cio.com/article/222421/what-is-enterprise-architecture-a-framework-for-transformation.html

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *