The Practice of Design

Our customer says: “I want our new system to have a response time of no more than two seconds!!”
Our IT Director says: “We must cut cost!! All new development efforts must fit within our existing environment, using existing tools.”

We have faced these challenges many times and are used to design challenges that have both stringent customer requirements and built-in IT constraints due to existing environment or technology realities.
So what do you do in such cases? You dig deep and become very creative. You pull out all your design skills. What does that mean? If you are like us, you have a solid foundation in design methodology, you have strong technical skills, and you have wellhoned ‘people skills’ like negotiating and communicating. Then, you put them all together and get to work!

As Architects, we have found that in order to meet the challenges placed on us by both the customer and our Information Technology leadership, we must understand the whole system of interconnected elements that participate in, impact, and influence the design process. The scope of a software architect’s world is awesome, as the breadth of experience documented in this book demonstrates...

Extract from ITABOK.

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