2.7 Architecture foundation

Your architecture foundation should be immutable. It’s the bedrock on which everything is built, enabling your team to create new capabilities while providing some safety guardrails and direction.

Lugdunum, foundations built to last: Roman ruins in the city of Lyon, France.

Introduction

Your architecture foundation establishes your system design, building on your target state architecture. It lays out your components based on domain modeling, functional, and non-functional considerations. In so doing, it enables your team to create new capabilities while providing some safety guardrails and direction at the same time.

It’s important to take time here to be sure everyone contributes and is heard. Your architectural foundation influences literally everything. It’s also important your team understands the foundation they’ll be building on. You don’t want team members lost and wandering “off map” into uncharted territory. The whole point of documenting your architecture foundation is to establish a common model.

Likely, you’ve experienced the opposite. I know I have. You know those banks that have really outdated online experiences? Features that feel like they're rooted in the 80’s? One project in particular stands out in my memory as a slow-rolling, long-term disaster. While my experience is years back, the organization moves so slow I’m sure it’s exactly the same today. A massive organization, very conservative (as banks tend to be). Not a technology innovator. They never invested in a unified architecture — or even the vision of one. Each department is heavily siloed. Divisions have to invent their own solutions. The organization does have a service catalog, but it’s massive because they are massive. Lots of tools, little guidance. Every departmental system was different and nothing talked to each other. It took years to coordinate feature changes between teams.

It pretty much put me off finance for nearly a decade (eventually, I did go back, but only after the trauma had faded).

Your architecture foundation will prevent that kind of misstep. The foundation itself will likely be expressed using a couple of models — an abstract architectural model and a concrete example are good models to start with.

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