Segun Alayande — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:26:31 GMT

Information architecture as a practice is simply the directed planning and design of a shared information environment.

Please, note the use of terms like “directed”, “shared” and “information environment”.

The concerns of this practice include the environmental context (includes objectives or purpose, roles and actions), information classification, information exchange, information structure, information presentation, information security and information use.

I have deliberately used the term, “environment” as opposed to system or system-of-systems to suggest an open environment which facilitates information exchange.

The scope of the environment determines the size of the problem. The scope may be value-network (community of enterprises), enterprise-wide, an application. The scope determines the importance of a concern for example, if the scope is within a network of organisations in an environment like the Airport, information sharing may take precedence over presentation. Even then, presentation is still critical towards the provision of flight information to Passengers and Visitors.

The methods or techniques applied to the different areas of concern differ depending on the scope of the environment.
It would be useful if someone develops a matrix mapping some of these dimensions mentioned above. I suspect that this matrix may provide insights on the differences between the roles of the global information architect, enterprise information architect and application information architect.

All information architects should be trained to adapt methods to match the scope of the environment. For example, Resource Lifecycle Analysis (Ron Ross) while commonly used to bridge Enterprise Information Strategy Planning and the development of an Enterprise Subject Area Model can be adapted for use as Entity Life History (SSADM) for the design of an application logical data models.

In summary, it is the scope of the environment or domain that determines whether you play at the enterprise or application level and not the size of the application (even where the application is labbelled “enterprise”).

If you spend more time working on information standards for interoperability within an industry or community of organisations, you are probably an enterprise architect even where your title is “Data Analyst”

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Segun Alayande