Architecture principles will be informed by overall IT principles and principles at the enterprise level, if they exist. They are chosen so as to ensure alignment of IT strategies with business strategies and visions. Specifically, the development of architecture principles is typically influenced by the following:. Merely having a written statement that is called a principle does not mean that the principle is good, even if everyone agrees with it. A good set of principles will be founded in the beliefs and values of the organization and expressed in language that the business understands and uses.
Principles should be few in number, future-oriented, and endorsed and championed by senior management. They provide a firm foundation for making architecture and planning decisions, framing policies, procedures, and standards, and supporting resolution of contradictory situations. A poor set of principles will quickly become disused, and the resultant architectures, policies, and standards will appear arbitrary or self-serving, and thus lack credibility.
Essentially, principles drive behavior. Architecture principles are used to capture the fundamental truths about how the enterprise will use and deploy IT resources and assets. The principles are used in a number of different ways:. Principles will sometimes compete; for example, the principles of "accessibility" and "security" tend towards conflicting decisions.
Each principle must be considered in the context of "all other things being equal". At times a decision will be required as to which information principle will take precedence on a particular issue. The rationale for such decisions should always be documented. A common reaction on first reading of a principle is "this is motherhood", but the fact that a principle seems self-evident does not mean that the principle is actually observed in an organization, even when there are verbal acknowledgements of the principle.
Although specific penalties are not prescribed in a declaration of principles, violations of principles generally cause operational problems and inhibit the ability of the organization to fulfil its mission. Too many principles can reduce the flexibility of the architecture.
The It Principle
The FDA does random audits, and failing such an audit can do very bad things to your market capitalization. This company did have a software process in place but were a bit challenged following it to the letter, mostly because the process wasn't very good. So, many project teams found themselves in the position of once they had delivered the software into production they now had to spend several weeks or months creating the documentation required to make it look like they had actually followed the process. This documentation had nothing to do with the actual software development, its only benefit was to CYA on the odd chance of an FDA audit.
Furthermore, the aim of the regulations is not to promote documentation, it's to reduce the chance of loss of life due to software-related mistakes; documentation after the fact doesn't further this goal at all. The software process which wasn't read. I've lost track of the number of organizations that I've worked in where someone within IT thought it was a good idea to put together, or better yet purchase and then modify, a detailed software process description.
Although this process description is typically pretty good, and the people behind it enthusiastic about it, the IT professionals that it's given too rarely bother to read it. Experienced people may flip through it, or simply wait for the half-day training course, and new hires may read the overview and specific portions of it the first week on the job. But invariably the process is rarely read during the actual development of software, typically because the IT professionals are in fact highly skilled and don't feel the need to read the procedures before doing their job.
In short, the process definition effort was mostly a wasted investment. Fundamentally, on many software development projects a lot of documents get created that ain't really needed at all, or more commonly, only very small portions of the documentation is actually required.
- Top25 Best Sale - Higher Price in Auction - February 2013 - License Plate (Top25 Best Sale Higher Price in Auction Book 30).
- The It Principle by Cate Austin.
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The anecdotes described above are likely reflections of bigger problems within your overall software process, but by adopting TAGRI you'd at least be on the way to addressing some of the challenges. The Solution One of the misconceptions about agile software development is that we don't write documentation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Agilists write high-value, effective documentation, and yes, in practice that proves to be a lot less documentation than what traditionalists write.
We achieve this by following these rules: Write documentation as a last resort.
If your goal is to communicate information to others, documentation is one of the worst possible options available to you see communication on agile projects. When this is the case strive to choose a better strategy, such as face-to-face conversation or a teleconference call. Distinguish between deliverable documentation and interim documentation.
Interim documentation should be treated much differently than deliverable documenation. Interim documentation includes such as requirements specifications or more accurately requirements speculations , design speculations, and team schedules to name a few. Deliverable documentation may include artifacts such as system overviews, user guides, and operations manuals. Deliverable documents are part of your solution and will be used by your stakeholders once you've deployed your solution into production. Create documents with a clear audience.
What is the meaning of "the principle of the thing"? - English Language Learners Stack Exchange
Without this knowledge you cannot accurately predict what is actually needed, and will therefore be motivated to over document. For example, many traditional development teams will produce comprehensive system documentation which is provided to the team maintaining the system. However, in practice, many maintenance programmers don't trust the documentation and often skim it to get an idea of where a problem might be, then they dive into the code to fix the problem or add the new feature, as the case may be.
When you observe maintenance programmers in practice, they don't need, nor want, the majority of the documentation provided to them. When given the choice, my experience is that most maintenance programmers that I know prefer concise, well written system overview documentation perhaps just a few diagrams and a summary of key decisions , a full regression test suite, and high-quality source code.
A popular introduction for an explanation, concern or complaint is: This doesn't change the interpretation very much.
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First a solid understanding of the word Principle is needed: My daughter when very young did not understand why I did not move out of someone's way in the aisle of the grocery store. The thing is a simple "excuse me may I get by you or may I pass" would normally clear the path for CustomerC. In other words, the principle of the thing is what matters to you. To understand this, you have to ask yourself: Does it matter when it matters? It becomes a principal to me when I value of what it means to me.
That is the principle way it affects when we say something is the principle of the thing.
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Here's the sentence that includes this phrase a questionnaire item: Basically the same as doing something on principle. Arguably the writer wanted to emphasise that there were several different principles involved " the principle" on each different occasion being a "different thing". But really, it's just that the italicised text is effectively a cliche.