Decisions Required vs. Decisions Made

Abstract

Contemporary enterprise architecture frameworks excel at inventorying as-is and at specifying to-be architecture landscapes; they also help enterprise architects to establish governance processes and architectural principles. Solution architects, however, expect mature frameworks not only to express such fundamental design constraints, but also to provide concrete and tangible guidance how to comply with framework building blocks, processes, and principles – a route planner is needed in addition to maps of destinations. In this chapter, the authors show how to extend an existing enterprise architecture framework with decision guidance models that capture architectural decisions recurring in a particular domain. Such guidance models codify architectural knowledge by recommending proven patterns, technologies, and products; architectural principles are represented as decision drivers. Owned by enterprise architects but populated and consumed by solution architects, guidance models are living artifacts (reusable assets) that realize a lightweight knowledge exchange between the two communities – and provide the desired route planners for architectural analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.