A-ESA

Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture

Why Adopt “Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture”?

The IT world is familiar with either Enterprise Architecture (EA) or Solution Architecture (SA) or Agile Architecture. So what is Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture (abbreviated as Agile ESA or A-ESA)? Have you ever wondered about the benefits and impact of Agile ESA?

Let me start by listing the most obvious benefits and limitations of EA, SA, and agile architecture:

  • Traditionally, enterprise architecture is part of strategic IT planning. However, experience shows that many organizations don’t really honor EA, even though they may have well-prepared presentation forms. Common problems with EA include lagging views and ineffective links to solution architectures. In general, EA is known for its lack of flexibility and difficulty in measurement.
  • Solution architecture often takes the form of software architecture design, system design, a specific technical architecture design, or the like for technology optimization, often missing the enterprise picture. Note that if a SA takes EA into consideration, then it’s already an ESA.
  • Agile architecture brings about fundamental changes in the way the system is deployed and evolves. It is highly adaptive. However, many so-called agile architectures fall short of expectations in terms of long-term sustainability, inconsistent quality, and difficulty in documentation.

In comparison, Agile ESA strikes the right balance between EA, SA and Agile architecture, and introduces various benefits, including

  • Enable holistic and realistic IT architecture – ESA provides a closer link between EA and SA at the right level of abstraction to accommodate different architectural styles.
  • Save architectural effort – ESA is supported by a modeling specification that provides a minimal, but necessary, set of ESA elements for easy and practical use.
  • Make better trade-offs – The agile ESA framework facilitates architectural thinking and landing without obvious fluffy planning or nitty-gritty design.
  • Reduce architectural debt – Finally, agile ESA helps achieve better architectural compliance by reducing architectural debt, which is not as easy to find as technical or code debt.

While EA is hardly measurable, agile architecture is rarely documented in architectural views, and most SAs are usually intended in a specific technology domain, agile ESA adopts a verifiable modeling approach to solutions that are subject to change. A-ESA forms a model that contains multi-dimensional views representing a significant part of the real solution system(s). The metrics elements, including governance, ensure architectural conformance for adaptability and sustainability.     

Note that the Agile ESA fits most of the solution architecture chosen for changes, unless a relatively small or independent solution. It is more suited to large solution projects, especially program-level projects that consist of multiple solution projects.

In the era of AI computing, A-ESA is even more applicable to large-scale solutions that are subject to change. See my separate post on this topic.

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