A Quick Intro of A-ESA - by Sean Gu

The IT world is familiar with either Enterprise Architecture (EA), Solution Architecture (SA), or Agile Architecture. So what is Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture (abbreviated as Agile ESA or A-ESA)? Have you ever wondered about the benefits and impact of Agile ESA?

Let me start by listing the most obvious benefits and limitations of EA, SA, and agile architecture:

• Traditionally, enterprise architecture is part of strategic IT planning. However, experience shows that many organizations don’t really honor EA, even though they may have well-prepared presentation forms. Common problems with EA include lagging views and ineffective links to solution architectures. In general, EA is known for its inflexibility and difficulty of measurement.
• Solution architecture often takes the form of software architecture design, system design, a specific technical architecture design, or the like, for technology optimization, often missing the enterprise picture. Note that if an SA takes EA into consideration, then it’s already an ESA.
• Agile architecture brings about fundamental changes in the way the system is deployed and evolves. It is highly adaptive. However, many so-called agile architectures fall short of expectations in terms of long-term sustainability, inconsistent quality, and difficulty in documentation.

In comparison, Agile ESA strikes the right balance between EA, SA and Agile architecture, and introduces various benefits, including

• Enable holistic and realistic IT architecture – ESA provides a closer link between EA and SA at the right level of abstraction to accommodate different architectural styles.
• Save architectural effort – ESA is supported by a modeling specification that provides a minimal but necessary set of ESA elements for easy, practical use.
• Make better trade-offs – The agile ESA framework facilitates architectural thinking and landing without the obvious fluff of planning or the nitty-gritty of design.
• Reduce architectural debt – Finally, agile ESA helps achieve better architectural compliance by reducing architectural debt, which is not as easy to find as technical or code debt.

While EA is hardly measurable, agile architecture is rarely documented in architectural views, and most SAs are usually intended in a specific technology domain, agile ESA adopts a verifiable modeling approach to solutions that are subject to change. A-ESA forms a model that contains multi-dimensional views representing a significant part of the real solution system(s). The metrics elements, including governance, ensure architectural conformance for adaptability and sustainability.     

Note that the Agile ESA fits most of the solution architecture chosen for the changes, unless it is a relatively small or independent solution. It is better suited to large solution projects, especially program-level projects that comprise multiple solution projects.

In the era of AI computing, A-ESA is even more applicable to large-scale solutions that are subject to change. Enterprise AI solutions need to take a similar ESA approach, whether AI-native or AI-augmented. See my separate repository and posts on related AI solution architecture.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you would like to read more Agile ESA (A-ESA) related posts, please visit a-esa.com.