Enterprise Architecture Domains

It has been a while since I posted last time, because I was pretty much occupied in my job to deliver some interesting projects on the edge between 2012 and 2013. Lucky enough I was able to deliver. :) On top of that there was a portion of Christmas preparation and a new private project with a Iceland Dog.

So now it is time for the first post in 2013. I was triggered today by a tweet from Keith Flanagan: "Enterprise Architecture is about people. Not domains!". I do not know what triggered the statement for him, but I am sure that he is right as tried to put it more than once in my own blog here, e.g. People in GLUE. My primary focus in my Enterprise Architecture work is clearly the people.

Nevertheless, I do believe that people and Domains (could be GLUE Domains, could be other Domains) are pretty much related. I believe most if not all Domains (and the resulting Domain Models) do exist to somehow create an area of responsibility or an empire. The thinking behind the GLUE Decks is also based on Domain thinking.

The Deck System of Systems can easily be split into several Domains for grouping purposes or to create a silo or an (as much as possible) area of responsibility. I think the Domains exist in the typical Enterprise and should therefore be identified, named and analyzed. I furthermore believe that in most cases there is a fairly clear hierarchy between the Domain and the Applications in that Domain. And quite often conflicts exist exactly where that hierarchy is not clear, where an Application belongs or should belong to more than one Domain. And I think what can be observed here is once again Conway’s Law.

I therefore have to explore Nick Maliks tweet deeper: "Autonomy is a necessary intrinsic motivator. EA must replace "empire building" with different autonomous goals." I am not sure if that is correct or not. I personally typically accept the given domains and work more as a mediator (or GLUE) between the various domains by looking for GLUE Diseases and trying to fix them. And as far as I remember it was always about people and always about communication, but maybe I have done it wrong or not used the full potential. Therefore I am happy to hear comments and ideas how to shift away from the standard empire building or tribe thinking towards something more holistic. I am not sure if that is truly possible.

Comments are more than welcome.