Taking an idea from one area of life and
applying it to another is one of the keys to innovation. It's good to copy.
When you think about it, the best ideas in IT were stolen from elsewhere.
Documents and files, for a start.
So, I'll steal an idea from Richard
Williams, writing in CIO magazine. He took the idea from Gartner, who got it
from the construction industry. It's called Pace Layering: “Pace Layering is based on an architectural
approach where a building is designed to tolerate change at various
frequencies. Some aspects of a building are built to last a lifetime, while
others are reconfigurable. This concept is applied to the enterprise
application portfolio, dividing it into layers, allowing changes to each
without disrupting the other.”
I particularly like “designed to tolerate
change”. Some might say “tolerate” needs replacing with something more
positive, like “enable”. But, on balance, I think the original wording is
astute. One of the virtues of an architecture is resilience, which means it's
capable of changing without breaking. But another virtue is robustness, which
gives a sense of maintained purpose under stress. An architecture that's too
enabling becomes formless.
Whatever – the key point is organizations
need to recognize (a) change is normal and (b) continuity is normal. They can
then plan appropriately. Too many organizations have spent too much energy
either denying the inevitability of change or arguing for the abandonment of
every “legacy” item.
If the oldest part of your building – its
foundation – is sound, you don't need to dig it up. But if there's not enough
light, it makes sense to cut some windows into the walls of roof. So, it may be
worth making your walls and roof from component systems. (Hello, bricks and
tiles.) The architectural mindset tends toward the
static. This is not a criticism – it's just a feature of the discipline.
Architects create blueprints, not movies. Adding the “pace” perspective helps
architects see the developmental needs of their creations.
Every business will need to reconfigure
itself in the future – over and over. Architects need to ask which parts of the
business are going to evolve at which speeds. Insurance CIO's Conundrum