Emergent architecture

Today I want to share something I received from the good folks at Gartner regarding “Emerging Architecture.”

Here is a press release that lists the seven properties they say differentiates “emergent architecture,” also known as “middle-out EA” and “light EA” from the traditional EAL approach.

Many of us have also heard the Coast Guard EA’s description of building the EA from the middle out.

Last year they released a research note on called “Understanding EA Approaches: Middle-Out.”  Here’s a snippet:

…middle-out focuses on a few key information architecture principles: network- effect sharing, consistency, usability and extensibility.

I’ve put the report in a place where the team can see it in CG Portal , but in doing a bit of research for this post, I found this post from Michael Elyett’s “Enterprise Strategic Transformation & Optimisation” blog that summarizes the key takeaways and provides some commentary I think is useful for the group.

As we build the CG-LIMS architecture in the context of the Coast Guard’s enterprise architecture, it will serve us well to purposefully build with the end in mind.  The end?  The end is efficient mission execution.  I share the ideas from Gartner and Micheal as a little exercise for the brain.