R&D Architecture

Buy vs. Build, acquisitions, and many other factors play into the correct approach to an overall Enterprise Architecture.

While sometimes questions of web, software, or new systems architecture are quick wins, it is important to understand and establish a solid and stable Enterprise Architecture.

An organization should have a set of standards by which they measure all decisions when it comes to technology.

SMB Architecture

Small/Small-Mid sized organizations are at higher risk to limit their ability to scale by not having at least a beginning set of standards in place. A scaling company severely risks having a proliferation of technology.

Sample Standard: Data

By creating a public bucket of standards, everyone has clear and defined guidelines in order to measure all decisions.

The buckets are quite simple, and can be expanded or contracted as needed, but follow a standard of things like Data, Usability, Integration Services, Applications, etc. Each one of the standard categories has multiple rules to apply to it, beginning with data.

Information Openness

Information must be open and available to support productivity and innovation.

Shared Asset

Data is an enterprise asset and cannot be owned by a department, team, or individual, with the exception of data classified as HR, accounting/finance, legal, and Executive level and higher operating roles.

Information Relevance

Data must be business relevant and have value.

Data Currency

Data must be timely.

Protection of data

Data is an asset that must be protected.

Data Origination

All data will have a “golden” copy and there will be a single defined SOR for all data elements.

There are many more, and these are just a few examples within what could be your standards around data. Some of these are common sense such as data must be timely. Data being timely is a given but how many times has a customer or CEO asked why is the server so slow?

If decision makers are always aware that “Data must be timely” when making decisions, it helps make the right decision overall, not just solving the immediate issue at hand.