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08.23.07
The Evolving Domain Language Of IT
 By
Charles Betz
One of the hallmarks of mature professions is that they have a clear and detailed language - a domain (or universe) of discourse or an ontology.
In the development of a human profession (such as IT), the profession's language is rarely if ever pre-ordained - it is collaboratively and often messily defined, based on real world experience, with major codifications (e.g. GAAP for the profession of accounting) as historical watersheds, and essentially contested concepts as landmines.
Gabriel Morgan's conceptual model of business-IT traceability represents a fairly standard, stripped-down view of a "stack" of concepts showing business-IT traceability, similar to many I have sketched and seen presented by enterprise architects.
For example, here is one from my book:
While my model and his differ in some respects, they are both simplified models of a domain language. They are more than glossaries, because they also imply a hierarchical relationship; the boxes are richer than appear at first glance because (for example in mine) there is also an implication that Databases only interact with Networks via Servers.
But why do we even care about this? Is it merely academic? No. The position of the IT profession, circa 2007, is that it has multiple overlapping domains of discourse, along with badly overloaded terms. We can see a small example, if we contrast Gabriel's model with mine: his uses the concept of Application, while mine uses the concept of Service. (I have other models which represent Application as a subtype of Service).
Two of the major domains of discourse are architecture and IT service management. I use architecture generally to include
Enterprise architecture
Application architecture
Software architecture
Data architecture
Network architecture
Technical architecture
all in the general enterprise IT sense. (This is not a discussion of computer architecture in the rigorous EE/CSCI sense.)
IT Service Management (ITSM) is a loose term for a growing body of theory and practice revolving around the customer's experience and perception of IT interactions; the best known (but by no means only) example of an ITSM framework is ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), whose v3 release was one of the major IT events of the year.
Most architects, if they hear the word "ITIL," will say "That's just about operations, right?" Actually, no; ITIL has always covered the entire lifecycle of large scale IT operations, with the following key exceptions:
Program Management
Project Management
Software Engineering Methodology
IT portfolio management, however, is definitely in scope, as are non-functional system requirements and a variety of other concerns that overlap with the architecture world.
In reviewing the domains of discourse for architecture versus ITSM, there are of course many points of consistency. However, one of the most troublesome terms is "service." It is of course confused with SOA, and in the ITSM world "service" is used as a surrogate for "application" as enterprise architects typically understand that term. (See also my long debate with Troy Dumoulin on this topic.)
The semantic debate is becoming sharp and specific, one that any good data or object modeler can understand. Either:
1. An Application is a subtype of Service
- OR -
2. A Service is composed of Applications.
I prefer the first, because it is simpler. One thing that the ITSM theorists do not seem to understand is that "Application" is itself a logical consensus concept. (Martin Fowler calls this the ApplicationBoundary problem.) Note that one of Martin's definitions is "A group of functionality that business customers see as a single unit." That definition takes the Application concept squarely into the territory inhabited by the ITSM Service concept.
Continue reading this article.
About
the Author:
Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT
Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise. He is author of the forthcoming Architecture and Patterns for IT Service
Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children (Morgan Kaufman/Elsevier, 2006, ISBN 0123705932). He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog.
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