artITecture

IT Architecture Diagrams July 17, 2008

we are coming to the second wave of a major project i am working on which is deploying to over seventy countries. I asked my architecture team to go an find out about the existing architecture of the next set of countries, and some bright spark asked what tool and standards we should use to document this.

For the wave 1 countries I invented an architecture diagramming standard using powerpoint *update* I have written a full detailed explaination of his notation -> here. The major thrust of the architecture work is integration oriented. I’m afraid UML is too detailed, and does not have constructs which show the logical flow – you have to go down to integration diagrams for this. In my mind UML diagrams =  the domain of an application architect and possibly an integration architect. It is not the domain of an enterprise architect or even a chief architect.

I know from prior analysis that there isnt a standard for this higher level diagram. In IBM method terms this is called an Architecture Overview Diagram. In essence  an Architecture Overview Diagram is a diagram which shows an architecture for a specific audiance and/or purpose. In my case the audience is other architects, with the purpose of talking about all of the significant components and all integration points within our direct control, and integrations with systems we have a dependency on; either to retrieve data from them or send our data to them.

In my model each major component is named on the diagram and uniquely numbered. a component could be something large like SAP, or even an abstraction and a collection of components – again SAP is like this, you have the GUI, the backend, you will probably bucket the database as SAP even though it isnt really SAP (in my case DB2).Or, it could be something very granular like a single service. The level of detail in the diagram is dependant on the audience, but none the less powerpoint is the tool of choice 😦

IBM itself uses Qualiware to document its own ‘to be’ Enterprise Architecture. I am not keen on this tool personally.  Maybe it isnt so much how the tool works perhaps it is the way we use it. I can argue that we mix business flows with integration flows and there is variation in the level of detail and what is shown amongst the various business units who document their as-is architectures.

In summary, there needs to be a standard for architecture charts. There needs to be a standard for enterprise architects, there needs to be a standard for chief architects, there needs to be a view for application/integration/infrastructure/network/data architects. It is astonishing that powerpoint is the major tool of choice. There needs to be referential integrity between these diagrams. Today this is manual, it is not enforced by the tooling.

is someone listening and fixing? 🙂 i can only hope!