May 23, 2016
All American Chair
November 26, 2014
Goods AND Serices --> AMAZON
Goods AND Serices --> AMAZON
October 2, 2007
Yin and Yang and Enterprise Architecture
Yin and Yang describe two primal opposing but complementary principles or cosmic forces said to be found in all non-static objects and processes in the universe.
The outer circle represents the entirety of perceivable phenomena, while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two principles or aspects, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause the phenomena to appear in their peculiar way. Each of them contains an element or seed of the other, and they cannot exist without each other.
Yin is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night. Yang is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the daytime.
All forces in nature can be seen as having yin and yang states, and the two are in constant movement rather than held in absolute stasis.
Yin and yang is a process of harmonization ensuring a constant, dynamic balance of all things. Excessive yin or yang state is often viewed to be unbalanced and undesirable.
User-centric EA applies the concepts of Yin and Yang—in terms of balance and harmony─to the way the chief enterprise architect relates to and works with users, the way products and services are developed, and the way architecture plans are formulated. Some examples:
- Working with users: The chief enterprise architect needs to recognize that in planning for the future state of the organization, there are going to be different points of views, diversity of aims and aspirations, and general conflict. The architect can use the principles of Yin and Yang to understand that opposing points of view are complementary and in fact necessary to vet issues and achieve better decision on behalf of the enterprise. The architect works to listen to all viewpoints and reconcile these to achieve a harmonized and optimal way ahead for the organization.
- Developing products and services: User-centric EA provides useful and useable products and services to the end-user. The philosophy of Yin and Yang helps guide the architect to develop information products that are dynamic (actively pushing out information to the end user), balanced (evenhanded, reasonable, and objective,) and where the information flows clearly and concisely. The point is to effectively communicate with users, so that they can access and use the EA knowledge base to make better decisions. EA communicates up, down, and across the organization as well as with outside entity stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, partners, and oversight authorities. In all cases clear and balanced communication is a key ingredient to building and maintaining the architecture and leveraging use for all parties.
- Formulating architecture plans: In developing a User-centric EA plan, the concepts of Yin and Yang help to develop plans that are neither black nor white (absolute) and that are not static (but rather fluid). For architecture plans to be effective, they need to provide “wiggle room” to the organization to adjust to changing needs and environment factors (i.e. plans should not be “black and white”, but should take into account shades of gray or in the case of the Yin and Yang, there is a little Yang in every Yin and vice versa). Additionally, as the flowing symbol of the Yin and Yang indicate, plans need to be fluid and move the organization in phases. You don’t just jump to the next big technology or slice and dice your business processes, but rather you evolve in a careful, planned, and incremental course—flowing from one state to the next and so on.
Yin and Yang and Enterprise Architecture
August 31, 2007
SOA Best Practices
(adapted from Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, CA, Masters Thesis—SOA for Coast Guard Command and Control by Dash and Creigh, March 2007 — approved for public release):
- Know when to use services – Explicitly define the extent to which we will and will not use services; services are selected with intent and do not randomly spring up.
- Think big, start small – This allows us to validate the architecture, while giving the organization value, realized as usable services.
- Build on what you have – Reuse legacy application functionality and data wherever possible.
- Use SOA to streamline business processes – SOA is an inherently flexible and interoperable model for hosting application functionality; this provides an opportunity to rethink and improve business processes.
- Incorporate standards – Use industry web service standards for navigation, application logic, integration, data stores, and enterprise infrastructure.
- Build around a security model – Functional design needs to be built around security, and not vice versa (security cannot be added as an afterthought).
- Design with quality in mind – Quality must be designed into the product, and not inspected into it.
- Organize development resources – Group development team around logical business tasks, and not around technologies.
- Train developers – Ensure designers and developers have the skills to implement SOA properly.
Basic definitions:
SOA is a software design methodology that uses loosely coupled services to perform business functions and processes.
A service is an implementation of a well-defined piece of business functionality, with a published interface that is discoverable and can be used by service consumers when building different applications and business processes.
In general, I think SOA is a great fit with User-centric EA, because the focus is on providing functional business services to the end-user, as opposed to developing monolithic, stove-piped, and redundant applications. The end-user should not have to use countless non-integrated applications systems (or even computers) to get their information, but rather the information should be technically transparent and readily accessible based on their business requirements.
SOA Best Practices