Architecture, Gaps and Dark Matter!
Yesterday I listened to a talk about the operational architect and was struck by the parallels with that of enterprise architecture. An interesting point was made on the topic of gap analysis that got me to thinking…
When investigating a problem we are all pretty well versed in the disciplines of gap analysis, but what about the situation where functions and roles intersect and overlap? It is one thing to identify a gap and then ‘fill it’ but altogether a different proposition when addressing areas of overlap where roles and responsibilities become blurred and a conflict of interests often ensues.
So gaps are easy to fix then, well maybe not, but we’ll leave them for the moment because at least we’ve accounted for them in some way and I want to concentrate on these overlaps. However, it is important to note for later on that even if we fixed all these gaps tomorrow our architecture would still be far from being in a prefect state – ie there must be something else out there that we cannot see.
From my experience it has seemed that the further one moves out from the coal face of technology the more the role of architecture shifts to the intangibles of human interaction, such that the majority of effort is expended on re-explaining the wheel and why it really should still be round!
Ok, so at least the architect is now engaged in the enterprise debate and therefore in some way has a voice. However, their function is still upward facing and as such is never fully effective in provisioning a successful enterprise.
So what’s going on? I think looking back that I have experienced more of working in the world of overlaps than not, I think that overlaps are not just at the edge of things but are more pervasive across all things ie. I don’t think that there are many things in IT that are well owned at all! And what’s more I think there are more gaps than our analysis tells us. Take the analogy of all the matter in the universe; there is the matter we can see and all the rest, the stuff we can’t, the dark matter, the majority of matter. I think this is true of gaps, we can see the obvious ones, but fixing them would not resolve all our issues. So there must be more gaps out there – dark gaps. So where are they? Hidden of course – hidden in the overlaps; in the zones of confusion where nothing is truly owned. These dark gaps lurk as black holes sucking in resources, time and money in the form of duplication and dualities, unknown, unseen, quietly building, until the flow clogs and back fires and then the gap is exposed, an enormous fissure, unaccounted, unexplained, unidentified and un-owned!
Ok, so climbing back off my soap box for a moment, I guess the mature thing would be to write at length about the detection and correction of dark gaps. But that would be presumptuous and as I said at the start it just got me to thinking … that’s all.
