Mindset
It is critical more than anything in our life as our life is the reflection of mindset; indeed. I don’t want to go with psychological details, but if you want you can read this entry article, or this beautiful book “The Mindset” by Carol Dweck.
Each one of us has a unique Mindset that cross-cutting with others in a specific area of interest and belief, result in different attitudes.
Actually, Architecture Solution is an attitude
You may need to read the previous articles in this series of “The Intuitive Software Architecture”:
iArchitecture Mindset
iArchitecture is define mindset as “The adopted knowledge which lead the attitude of architecture”.
The state of iArchitecture is determined by the active architecture phase as either Act or Capture which are iteratively affect on each other in a mutually inductive way to constitute and evolve iArchitecture mindset.
We will refer to this mutual iteration as Act-Capture Model, abbreviated as AC Model.
The following diagram gives more detail about the activities which might be carried out with each phase in AC model
AC model doesn't suppose to start from specific side, just start and iterate to evolve the mindset. the time of iteration of each side is variant according to the priority of work.
AC model is an iterative model of capturing (principles, knowledge, and experience) and acting to produce architecture. Principles are considered the most important item in AC as the base to setup good architecture mentality.
Lets go with more detail of each item in the AC model
Capture
capture is the phase where mind educated to learn principles, standards, and other knowledge. It is the memory that can be developed overtime to reach the state of wisdom.
All information is retained in the mindset book as the guidance used by architects during act phase. The following diagram depict the main topics in the mindset book
From bottom-up, the topics are:
- Principles — The fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning [Oxford English dictionary]. That defination is what adopted by iArchitecure mindset.
- Standards — The authorized and the reliable specifications that describe the ideal characteristics of things and processes (e.g. HTTP protocol standard).
- Guidelines — the knowledge of how to apply a solution or to follow a standard (e.g. developing web application using HTTP protocol with specific technology).
- Assessments —There are two usages for assessments in iArchitecture: a) as control unit which measure the deviation between development implementation and architecture solution; b) or to assess a new technology or approach which can be utilized in the architecture solution.
- POC — The experimental part that can be used to validate architecture solution before proceeding in the implementation, or to assess a new technology.
- Solution — The architecture solution which is tailored based on the stakeholders' requirements and the adopted principles.
Also, we can have more deep view to the mindset book from the perspective of content type as knowledge content and experience content as follows:
- Knowledge content which represents the academic/educative part of mindset like principles, standards, and guidelines.
- Experience content — a special knowledge content which represent the practical part of the mindset like assessments, POCs, and architecture solutions. That means, experience content is still a knowledge content that retained for future use as an educative content by humans or AI.
let's look to Mindset book as a well-organized and categorized document center, and that’s what we are going to explain in detail in the article of “Intuitive Software Architecture: The Content”
Mindset Book is in somehow influenced with TOGAF Architecture Content (specially Architecture Repository) but with intuitive attitude which also influenced with the real cases in the progressive and changeable market. iArchitecture is designed to be battlefield framework so it cares with mindset evolving to deliver flexible and practical architecture solutions which can cope with changes, so as mentioned early mindset principles is crucial part in iArchitecture.
Act
The reflected attitude on the architecture outcome as result to what adopted in the knowledge base of Capture phase.
The activities which can be carried out in this phase are but not limited to:
- Design a solution
- Assess the implementation of architecture solution or a new technology
- Run proof of concept (POC) to validate architecture or to assess a technology
- Provide technical consultation for all stakeholders as required.
- Learn new knowledge
All mindset Act activities will be covered in detail in the article of “What is the iArchitecture Framework?” and the information
The Importance of Architecture Mindset
It is obvious that the behavior is the fruit of mindset of an individual. That means, it is expected to see a very wide shades of individuals behavior according to each one knowledge and the experience.
(1) Common Architecture Mindset
The same in architecture, each architect has his own set of knowledge and experience. They may cross in common area, so each organization must develop its architecture mindset (driven by the organization mindset) to increase the common area between architects and to eliminate personal bias -as possible-.
(2) Evolved Architecture Mindset
It is not only about unifying the architecture mindset, but also to evolve the architecture mindset as we go, which will be reflected on the quality and the efficiency of architecture solutions, which means increase in the profit and new opportunities.
(3) Balanced Architecture
And the last but not the least is creating a balanced architecture, or in other words a practical architecture. Architecture mindset will help in analyzing stakeholders (themselves) and their requirements to create a practical solution aligned with stakeholders demands and the ideal technical solutions.
The following diagram depict how the architect mindset play the role of making a balance between the Target architecture, Transient architecture, and the Real/Current implemented architecture affected by the input of each stakeholder.
The Red dots in the above diagram refers to the priority of each stakeholder which help in identifying the critical parts of architecture (from stakeholder point of view)
The Architecture Delta is the indicator of the real-architecture deviation either from the staging solution or from the target solution. The Delta indicator is used by the architect to monitor the real solution toward the target, or to raise a risk flag. more about this indicator will be detailed in “Architecture Maturity and Governance” article.
From management point of view, I’d recommend PMI disciplined agile mindset as organization reference for agile development and architecture mindset principles.
Thanks, Hisham.
keep tuned.. the next article is another excited topic about how to create architecture views using architecture dimensions.
