Preventing Design Pitfalls
One of the problems that arises in an information architecture is that the data can act as a binding agent and slow down IT's ability to rapidly respond to needed changes. For example, a common practice for instantiating data is to take a real-world concept and represent that concept in a literal and binding manner. In our changing world, many real-world concepts are often just anchored to a point in time and may be susceptible to change or interpretation. Any concept that is stored is typically used, verbatim, in a program or an application and potentially on a user's screen.
Another example: a person's gender might be tagged/named as “gender” in a database, referred to as “gender” in program code, and then labeled “gender” on a screen. The data is now serving to tightly bind various components of an information architecture together. Moreover, the tight coupling is extended to the business.
Gender is a term that has changed in popular meaning and use. Formerly, gender was popularly considered an immutable designation as to a person being either male or female. Society has moved away from that binary. The binding aspects attributed to instantiating data can make it difficult for systems to adapt to a new use without a rippling effect that requires a system to go through a significant rewrite or modification.
To replace the historical use of gender, at least two concepts are needed: one to represent a biological interpretation and one to represent a mutable societal preference that can be updated to reflect any needs changes.
As indicated, a tightly coupled alignment between the business and IT may result in an inability to fully leverage data in a meaningful manner beyond the point in time that the alignment was established. Intrinsically, alignment is the result of a cognitive desire to satisfy a specific point-in-time requirement or need.
The futurist Alvin Toffler described how the speed of change forces decisions to be made at “a faster and faster pace” and reveals how waves of change are not just isolated instances but have intertwined correlations across “business, family life, technology, markets, politics, and personal life” (The Third Wave, New York: Bantam Books, 1981). If a system is too tightly coupled to a point in time, alterations that are made to a system can lag behind the necessary business decisions that need to be taken, resulting in poor decision-making or missed opportunities simply because the system cannot be revised at the speed of business.
Influences or mandates for change to an organization can be externally driven or internally driven. External influences such as competition, government regulation, the environment, the arrival of new technology, suppliers, vendors, and partners are a few different types of stimuli that can result in the need to define a new, potentially immediate point in time. Internal influencers such as new senior management or a shift in corporate values, the execution of a management prerogative, and the availability or unavailability of resources or skillsets may create new types of demand. An information technology solution backboned on alignment (e.g., tightly coupled) with the business is likely to result in a current solution being misused and potentially damaging to the quality of the corporate digital knowledge base. A test of an information architecture is its inherent ability to facilitate the winds of change.
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
The difference between architecture and design is not immediately clear. Professor and author Philippe Kruchten has argued that all architecture is design. By using themes of difficulty and cost, an example can be used to help create a mental model for delineation.
A building has an external structure. Within the building, rooms are created, and furniture or other objects can be placed in each room. In this analogy, the external structure represents architecture, and the objects in a room represent design. The placement of the furniture, even if heavy, can be rearranged with minimal effort and cost. New elements can even be brought into the room over time, and other elements can be removed. The placement is designed.
The external walls may be immovable, especially if you just want to move the walls on the 50th story of a skyscraper. But, even if you could move the walls, the time, expense, and complexity can make the prospect inadvisable.
Elements within your designs that are anchor points and highly disruptive or expensive to change are architectural. Elements that can be reasonably changed over time are design elements. In an information architecture, the need to have an environment to support AI is architectural; the use of a machine learning library or the selection of features for use in a model is design.
Facilitating the Winds of Change: How Organized Data Facilitates Reaction Time
How much time an organization is given to respond to a change is a variant and is always predicated on being circumstantial. When the European Union introduced a law known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), all companies conducting business with individual citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area were given a specific date by which they were required to comply with the changes the law introduced.
When the media company Netflix switched its core business model to subscription-based streaming from online DVD rentals, the company essentially gave notice to all brick-and-mortar DVD rental companies to switch their own existing business models or risk irrelevance. The response from the traditional DVD rental companies has proven to be overwhelmingly inadequate. So, while Netflix does have marketplace competition, the competition is not coming from the organizations that owned or operated the brick-and-mortar DVD rental facilities at the time Netflix switched its business model.
Sometimes transformations occur in a slow and progressive manner, while some companies can seemingly transform overnight. Some transformation needs can be sweeping (e.g., to comply with insider-trading rules). Adjustments might even blindside some employees in ways that they perceive as unwarranted.
Sweeping changes equivalent to eminent domain can be part and parcel of management prerogative. An internal IT department can be outsourced, a division can be sold, sales regions rearranged, and unsatisfactory deals made just to appease a self-imposed quota or sales mark. Some of these changes can be forced on an organization on a moment's notice or even appear to be made on a whim. Like eminent domain, sometimes change arrives at the organization swiftly and seemingly capriciously—but when it comes, reaction is not optional.
NOTE
Eminent domain is a government's right to expropriate private property. In 1646, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) coined the term eminent domain as taking away by those in authority. In general, eminent domain is the procurement of an individual's property by a state for public purposes. An individual's right to own a home and the land beneath it is viewed as part of the liberty extended to all Americans by the Constitution of the United States. Varying degrees of land ownership is also a liberty afforded to individuals in many other nations around the world, too.
Within a corporate culture, eminent domain represents the ability for senior leaders to maneuver around previously accepted controls and protocols.
MUTABLE
In computing, a mutable object is an object whose state can be modified after it is created. An immutable object is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created. Designing solutions to be mutable will make it easier to address new needs. When it comes to managing data, adding mutability concepts into a design will make adding a variable, deleting a variable, and modifying a variable's use or characteristics easier and more cost effective.
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