Chapter 11. Data Architecture

Real teams don't emerge unless individuals on them take risks involving conflict, trust, interdependence and hard work.

Katzenbach and Smith

It is rare for all but a few privileged organizations to have complete data architectures. Data architecture is made up of the structure of all corporate data and its relationships to itself and external systems. In far too many situations, the business community has to enlist the assistance of IT to retrieve information due to the community's inconsistency, lack of intuitiveness, or other factors. The goal of any architecture should illustrate how the components of the architecture will fit together and how the system will adapt and evolve over time.

Taking an agile approach to data architecture will allow for the integration of existing corporate data and applications, allowing for new business requirements and systems to be easily integrated into the organization's technology nervous system. Enterprises everywhere find it increasingly necessary to incrementally change applications and their data in a rapid manner. Sometimes this may result in building bridges, using a Service-Oriented Architecture to overcome integration challenges or even rewriting legacy applications to accommodate new data requirements.

The practice of architecture is a long and rapid succession of sub-optimal decisions, mostly made in partial light. Phillippe Kruchten, 1999

An agile approach to data architecture will ensure that all mission-critical information is well managed, accounted for, and appropriately shared. It will also have the benefit of creating a common terminology for corporate data elements and will add immense value to future software development initiatives. This chapter will help you reach this goal.