Technology Leadership
Value of the Reuse, Share, Repeat Process in Business
Importance of using reference architectures as best practices for digital transformation architecture and design initiatives
The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of reusing, sharing, and repeating best practices by business and technology architects and designers within digital transformation programs.
A digital transformation life-cycle is recursive with successive steps and results. Even though initiatives have deadlines, there is no end to digital transformation programs. Therefore, it is a program rather than a project or initiative. For example, we may complete a cycle, but as soon as its completion, we need to deal with another transformation cycle requiring architecture and design.
As time passes, business organizations change directions, new business requirements emerge, business systems get older, technology stacks become obsolete, and business processes get convoluted and unusable; just like human beings, everything ages in the ecosystem.
Therefore, we must always modernize and transform our business ecosystem, including people, processes, tools, and technology stacks. We keep developing architecture and design artifacts.
Due to this natural [or, more accurately, digital] phenomenon, I added the repeat step to my digital transformation method called DTM. However, from an architectural and design perspective, the repeat process must be well-structured and coherent based on a dynamic life-cycle management process.
You can find details of DTM for architects and designers in this article.
Importance of Asset Reuse
As business and technology architects, we can reuse our business and technology architectural frameworks and design assets multiple times as needed.
The main reason for this is to save time and reduce the cost of rework. In addition, using established and validated building blocks of our architectural and design solutions can be powerful in maintaining and increasing the quality of requirements coming from our business stakeholders and consumers.
The most commonly used architectural assets are reference architectures. Let me introduce reference architectures to give you an idea of their business and technical value.
Reference Architectures
A reference architecture is a re-usable business solution or a technical design in a template format. The main use case for reference architecture for digital transformation initiatives is to improve quality, save a considerable amount of time, and reduce project cost. As you know, quality, time, and budget are the three core pillars of project management discipline.
Reference architectures are developed by experienced architects and designers based on successful outcomes obtained from proven and previously delivered business solutions to consumers.
This means that we can trust the reference architectures as they were once successfully delivered for consumption. Following the same path as our customized specifications, these reusable templates can save us a considerable amount of time and can improve the quality of our new and risky solutions.
As reference architectures are developed by experienced architects and designers, they can also guide us in dealing with the unknown aspects of the initiatives. Unknown situations can be risk prone.
Therefore, reference architectures can also contribute to risk mitigation goals in initiatives. Risk mitigation is another critical success factor in the project management discipline.
As multi-purpose assets, reference architectures can be used for various domains, can be combined to extend functionality for an application, and can be integrated into the final business and technology architecture outcomes.
Reference architectures are developed based on the collaborative spirit in many organizations. Some architects share their experiences internally or externally for various reasons. A community of practices (CoPs) is a prime example. You can obtain my experience in innovative collaboration in digital transformation programs.
For example, some architects and designers share them for charitable give-back purposes or networking, or to boost their reputation and recognition in their industry. Whatever the reasons they share them, the reference architectures are invaluable resources for our planned solution architecture and designs.
Open-source organizations produce many reference architectures in their domains. There are two primary sources for these reference architectures: either their members develop them as part of an open-source team, or some commercial companies donate their reusable assets to open-source organizations as reference architectures. The Open Group (TOG) is a typical example of this kind of open-source organization.
Reference Architectures can be at a high-level or detailed level. For example, a typical IoT reference Architecture at a high level can include essential points, such as Portal, Dashboard, API Management, Analytics, Services, Communications, Devices, Device Management, Security Management, and Infrastructure.
Reference Architectures are usually represented in diagrams with minimal text to explain the representations in abstract diagrams. Clarity is the main factor for reference architecture. Reference Architectures usually are easy to understand and use.
As business and technology architects, we must encourage our team members, including domain and solution architects and designers, to leverage available reference architectures related to digital transformation constructs.
We also need to encourage them to create their reference architectures and share them with other domain architects in our programs.
As a by-product, use of reference architectures in agile delivery initiatives can be ideal as these artifacts can be derived quickly with minimal effort. Agile scrum masters embrace use of reference architectures.
The bottom line, from my experience, smart reuse of architectural assets can help reduce architecture and design cost substantially in the digital transformation programs whilst increasing quality and shortening project time frames. The best practice is use of proven reference architectures.
You can obtain my experience on the cost aspect of digital transformation from this article.
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