6 MOBILE UI/UX MISTAKES TO AVOID- By Shanal Aggarwal (Head - Global Sales, TechAhead)

INTRODUCTION

“Most people who come from IT today are thinking of building and running systems and not about engineering and manufacturing enterprises. My argument here is that the end objective is to engineer and manufacture the enterprise, not simply to build and run systems.” - John Zachman, inventor of Enterprise Architecture.

Let us begin by understanding the term ‘Enterprise Application Architecture’. It is a description of the structure of the application and software used across the organization. It depicts relationships between the various subsystems of a business and relationship of system with its users and external environment. Guidelines and terminology related to the application also constitute its enterprise architecture.

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THE EIGHT BUILDING BLOCKS OF ENTERPRISE APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE

Basically Enterprise Architecture or EA is made up of the 3P’s- People, Platforms and Processes. Hence for the enterprise architecture of an application to be robust, its key components need to be robust too. Platforms on which application runs and develops should be secure and agile; processes associated with the application should be configurable, automated and integrated and; people developing and using the application should be productive, intuitive and available.

So, what are the fundamental principles an enterprise architect needs to consider while designing application architecture? Let us take a look at eight pillars of enterprise application architecture:

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• IDENTIFY YOUR FRAMEWORK

Standard frameworks used by the industry are ToGAF, Zachman, EA3 and DoDAF. Using a standard framework gives your architecture a “skeleton” that can be used to build your business models. A framework also provides guidance on organizing information but does not suggest a specific implementation for your architecture. The frame work you choose depends on the goal of your architecture, your team’s experience and the level of definition you want for your model.

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• MAINTAIN AN APPLICATION REPOSITORY

Overlapping systems mean islands of information supported by specialized yet redundant applications. A solution will be to bring this information into a centralized, normalized content repository. The most compelling benefit from this move is cost savings in the form of reduced support cost and reduced disk storage requirements. If you have all your data in one place, you can easily arrange for it to be backed up. Data repository would act as an “insurance Policy” against any unforeseen data disaster.

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• QUALITY ATTRIBUTES IN YOUR APPLICATION

Desirable qualities in your enterprise applications can be grouped into four categories- qualities that define usability; developmental qualities like changeability; operational aspects such as performance and last but not the least, security. Never compromise on these qualities owing to constraint in time, cost and resources. These qualities need to be measurable, monitored and practical.

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• USABILITY OVER MULTIPLE PLATFORMS

Usability goes beyond the individual user experience with the application. Here we are dealing with a large enterprise. At this level, the focus is on how the system impacts the company over time, including issues in administration, installation and maintenance. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is often one of the most important usability metrics at the enterprise level.

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• BASED ON SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE OR SOA

While large organizations develop applications with new technologies, it is necessary to leverage investment made in legacy applications and reuse their functionality. Service oriented architecture is the answer to this issue. SOA-based enterprise applications are vendor independent. They are scalable distributed applications that are integrated based on enterprise-wide strategy.

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• SUPPORTS MULTIPLE APPLICATION INTERFACES

Enterprise application integration is how we bridge gaps between different software programs, enabling data flow from one program to another, and providing interfaces to manage the flow. The main benefits of this integration are information sharing between separate software programs; process automation; reduced IT complexity by combining information and functionality of several applications into a single, easy-to-use interface and; increased agility of the organization in responding to opportunities.

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• INTEGRATION WITH LEGACY APPLICATIONS

Legacy system refers to outdated computer systems, programming languages or applications that are used instead of available upgraded versions. These systems pose problems of compatibility and lack of security. Redesigning costs are heavy prompting companies to continue using these obsolete programs. Enterprise architecture should be portable enough to be easily integrated with legacy systems in the organization so that maximum cost benefit can be derived from these systems.

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• FACILITATE APPLICATION EVOLUTION

Application architecture should be such that it can withstand the test of time. It should not render your enterprise application redundant after some time. A good test of architecture’s ability to manage evolution is the degree of support for dissimilar target systems. If the architecture supports IBMi and Windows, it is likely to be compatible with different versions of supported operating systems or databases.

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BASED ON ABOVEMENTIONED PRINCIPLES WE CAN SUMMARIZE ATTRIBUTES OF A GOOD ENTERPRISE APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE AS ONE WHICH IS:

•Robust – Your enterprise application should not be vulnerable to minor changes in business information, applications and technical systems. Tools like Traceability Window and Relationship matrix can be utilized to verify if the architecture is well-integrated.

•Feasible – The objectives of your enterprise application should be reasonable. Architect may use Element Discussion Window and allow designers and developers to discuss the architecture and determine its feasibility.

•Utilitarian – Your enterprise application should have a practical outcome. It should have a demonstrable and measureable value visible to all stake holders.

•Durable – Architecture is a living entity. Once implemented it becomes the new baseline state. It should be resilient to changes in business during its lifetime.

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•Flexible – It should be adaptable to changing conditions and provide guidance to implementation teams to make necessary decisions about technical problems and opportunities. Too much detailed architecture is brittle. There should be scope for change.

•Verifiable – A test for verifying the effectiveness of your enterprise model is to verify if it has delivered business value that was promised in its Vision statement.

•Elegant – Simplicity of form and function is another characteristic of a good enterprise application model.

•Traceable – An application’s architecture does not exist in isolation. It constantly interacts with business drivers and other architectures at same or different level. The Insert related Elements facility can be used to automatically construct a diagram of traces creating expressive views of the repository we spoke about earlier.

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SUMMARY

An enterprise is a large system. It has many subsystems which often overlap. Enterprises use multiple applications and sometimes they make a mess. Enterprise application architecture is a tool to bring semblance of order in this chaos. But as Julie Craig, Research Director, Enterprise Application Management Associates put very aptly into words,” When trying to pin down the top factors impacting applications’ performance, the right answer is that there is no right answer- the source of a performance problem could be almost anywhere!”

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