Dodecarchedron

I posted an item to Twitter today regarding my architecture theme of the month:

face immense resistance to simple ideas, then watch people clamor for them once a clue sets in

This prompted a conversation with fellow architects Brandon Satrom and Mark Masterson. At first they remarked that this is not so much a theme for the month as much as a recurring phenomena. I commented that I randomly select from a pool of themes each month. This started the small flurry of conversation from TheSatch and mastermark.

Without further ado, here is a draft version of the 'Dodecarchedron'.



Feel free to embrace and extend at your whim. The themes could stand some iterative refinement.

I having a working prototype I now use for my monthly theme selection. I am hoping to report on results of its use later this year.

Based on a suggestion from Mark, I'm contemplating a version based on an icosahedron. Twelve themes does indeed seem like an insufficient buffer size for candidate themes. As Mark mentions, perhaps we will see a wave of IT organizations playing Dungeons and Architecture. :-)

But wait! There's more!

Perhaps even twenty is insufficient. Perhaps we should be considering a pentakis dodecahedron.

Enumeration of the 60 sides is left as an exercise for the reader.

Enterprise Architecture and IT Teams

The posting Actionable Enterprise Architecture through Feedback by Nick Malik is a nice writeup on the value of feedback between EA and IT teams. The core concept is simple - both parties need to operate in a feedback loop. Nick provides three examples of loops worth developing. The article is well worth a read.

What's at stake? How about an answer in the form of two questions:

Would you want an architect to build your house?
Would you like the construction crew to architect it?

And yes, I normally dislike resorting to a comparison between building architecture and enterprise architecture, but it does have its uses.