Notes

Outline

LEA Section 6, Chapter 6: Thin Top Down

What is thin top down

Thin top down learns from experience

The benefit of thin top down Thin-top down approach align IT solutions by learning the IT solution from similar lines of business. It rapidly establishes the common IT foundation via the enterprise LOBs. It is a thin top down without the delay of the fat top down waterfall analysis.

Fat Top Down is stove pipe oriented

The limitation of fat top down In the traditional EA approach, the enterprise have to wait for the water fall analysis to align technology with business. Traditional EA paralyze by analysis Technology can not wait

The thin top down approach

Identify the Enterprise LOBs Conduct high level business analysis Map the enterprise business function to the common line of business defined by the FEAPMO reference model. Establish the enterprise business reference model.

Estimate the workload In addition to line of business, it is also critical to know the enterprise workload and performance requirements. IT solution patterns is not only align to business functions but also depends on workload and performance requirements. It is analogy to cloth shopping. It is critical to know the kind of business and the size of the individual.

Learn from solution patterns Leverage on industrial pattern analysis effort such as the IBM patterns to establish standard architecture patterns instead of reinvent the wheel. Standard architecture patterns serve as a macro standard language in conjunction with  TRM  to communicate with application developers. The standard patterns which encapsulate  complicate business business logic serves as the technology requirements to design the common IT resources.

Search for solution patterns The challenge of reuse is to find  the sources for reuse. To learn the experience from the others requires special effort and cost. Private industry like IBM has established many business oriented solution patterns such as banking and insurance. Government agencies can learn from each other on the similar line of business.

Private industry experience Private industry like IBM has established many business oriented solution patterns such as banking and insurance. They reuse their solution pattern to the similar industry with great success.

The desire of ERM Enterprise Reference Model is the effort to establish the business driven solution pattern to enable the thin top down approach.  It requires an industrial effort to maintain the business driven solution patterns repository. Business owner can acquires the solution based on line business and the workload and performance requirements.

Establish standards The outcome for the engineering of reuse is align IT with business to establish solution standards which include business, services, data and technology. The engineering of sharing design the consolidate solution architecture based on the established standards.

Simple and Agile Simple and agile is a measurement of maturity for an industry. It will become a culture as the gateway to information age. The engineering of reuse enable simple and agile approach to take advantage of technology evolution.