Trend Oriented Architecture
posted by Anna Mar, August 14, 2012Trend Oriented Architecture is a enterprise architectural anti-pattern whereby organizations blindly follow technology trends without sufficient business justification.
Technology Trends Serve a Useful Purpose
Trends serve a useful architectural purpose. After all, architectural trends are usually good ideas. They've been put forth by the best and brightest architectural thinkers. Trends serve to get the architectural community moving in the same direction.They're also easy to sell to your organization. After all, they get plenty of media attention.
The Perils of Trendy Technology
Implementing any technology without a good business reason is a bad idea (whether it's trendy or not).Blindly embracing trendy technologies is particularly dangerous for several reasons:
1. They're expensive.
2. No clear leader may exist (risk of choosing the wrong product).
3. Trendy products are often rushed to market (low quality).
4. Trends die quickly (rapid loss of stakeholder support).
Why It Happens
Trend Oriented Architecture is perhaps the most common (and most expensive) mistake that enterprise architects make. There are several reasons it happens:It's easy to get support for trendy architectural concepts.
No architect wants to appear to be out-of-touch
Trendy technologies look good on a resume and impress your friends.
It's generally more fun to do the latest thing.
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