Basic Information Architecture

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Comment by Marco Ribeiro on August 9, 2009 at 3:38pm

Hey, I am 50 years old and still alive and kicking

Comment by William Moore on August 9, 2009 at 3:30pm

Marco

Yeah, I was actually part of a couple at AT&T, Reader's Digest, and a few smaller companies. It was then that I first started recommending that people document M&Ps within the context of a Data Model, and demonstrating to people how a canonical synthesis could be used, coupled with the notion of semantics to create models that could be used in tandem with the M&Ps.

I would list out the steps to the synthesis methods and discuss semantic within the context of the M&Ps.

Reader's Digest realized huge gains...AT&T was not as receptive. The end users and developers at AT&T bought into our results, but management decided to go with the silver bullet and bought NCR.... as it turns out, the team didnt explain and demonstrate to management the ROI of our efforts or consider interpersonal issues.

Alas, I was a lot younger in those days. I wasnt as sensitive to the ego thing as I am now. Nowadays, when I do knowledge-transfer, training, or work with with people to provide solutions, I temper the rate in which I introduce new ideas and paradigm shifts.

Comment by William Moore on August 9, 2009 at 3:01pm

Marco

Agreed -- without prejudice or caveats....

Comment by Marco Ribeiro on August 9, 2009 at 2:59pm

Does anyone remember the "methods and procedures" teams, so strong in the mid 80's? they used to create and maintain the first abstract models known.

Comment by Marco Ribeiro on August 9, 2009 at 2:57pm

Information Architecture - Models or set of models which represent a bsuiness scenario of any kind, composed of company. company areas, business process and information used into the scenario. For each scenario, we define IT structures which will either support it as new applications or are already there as present apps.
The reason for this is that today's companies need more flexibility in their information models to stay competitive. No longer we can rely on purely tehcnological solutions, even the services model - they do not work if we don't know in advance what sort of information we are going ot deal with, and this only happens through abstraction - tech agnostic models.

Makes sense?

Comment by Mohammed Thiab on August 9, 2009 at 2:52pm

Thanks William for your elaboration on the topic.

It would be nice to establish the foundation before getting to the details. Or viewed from a a different perspective, let us take a top-down approach to the subject.

Putting technology aside for the moment, we would still need at the 'abstract' level to differentiate "DATA", "RAW DATA" from "INFORMATION' which is of course a more advanced and "PROCESSED" form of data, and the interaction of this information with human mind to create "KNOWLEDGE" and later on - hopefully- to "WISDOM" which is more advanced from knowledge.

Taking the above into account, I would like to hear from you and from Marco what kind of "information architecture" we are talking about at this stage.

Thanks

Comment by William Moore on August 9, 2009 at 2:03pm

Marco

Let me also state that I agree with caveats. Sometimes there may be technology items that need to be addressed that are somewhat orthognal, in that they will be implemented as stated regardless of what is discovered by IA. Since we always have to deal with the notion of 'time to deliver', I've often worked with teams on the technical layer simultaneously while dealing with the abstractions that we've mentioned. Bottom line - sometimes we may not be always able to do the BEFORE (waterfall approach) thing.

Comment by William Moore on August 9, 2009 at 1:56pm

Marco

Well put - agreed

Comment by Marco Ribeiro on August 9, 2009 at 1:50pm

Hello.

Mohammed, thanks for your comments - illustrative as always!

But let me put a bit of fire into that discussion - when I refer to information architecture I try to refer to an abstract layer BEFORE any further design effort takes place. You can create abstract pictures of an enterprise app and only after making sure they represent the truth, start working on Technical Arch. Abstract models go well beyond pure knowledge and serve as models to map business and its systems interactions. If we are able to map correctly those iteractions then everything becomes easier to design.
Abstraction is not easy to understand,, but it has returns, believe me.

Comment by William Moore on August 9, 2009 at 1:37pm

Marco and Mohammed, the above represents what I've practiced in the past. Let me know if what I've written helps or add additional confusion.

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