Explained: Choosing a Framework

The chief enterprise architect walks out of a vendor presentation holding a glossy deck titled "Your TOGAF Transformation Journey." A consultancy has just pitched Aldermont a two-year engagement to roll out a full formal architecture practice, complete with certifications, a documentation standard, and a review process for every project in the bank. It is thorough. It is expensive. And a quiet voice is asking whether the bank actually … Read More

Explained: The Zachman Framework

Aldermont's core consolidation program has produced a lot of documents. There is a customer data model from the data architects, a set of process maps from the business analysts, a network diagram from the infrastructure team, a project schedule from the program office, and a list of regulatory obligations from compliance. Each is correct. Each was made by a different group for a different reason. And no one can say whether, together, they d… Read More

Architecture: TOGAF and the ADM

Aldermont's board has finally signed off on the thing every engineer at the bank has wanted for years: consolidate the three core banking systems into one. The Calford mainframe, the Piedmont commercial platform, and the Northline cloud core will become a single core with a single definition of a customer. It is a multi-year, multi-hundred-million-dollar program that touches every part of the bank. The chief enterprise architect is handed the… Read More

Explained: The Four Architecture Domains

A customer walks into an Aldermont branch and applies for a mortgage. From their side it is one action: fill in a form, hand over documents, wait for a decision. Inside the bank, that single request touches almost everything the organization is made of. It invokes a business process someone designed. It reads and writes data whose meaning someone had to define. It runs through software systems someone built or bought. And all of that executes on… Read More

Explained: Enterprise Architecture

The bank wants to launch a new instant-payments feature in the mobile app. The head of retail digital scopes it out and hits a wall on day one. To move money in real time, the feature needs to read a customer's live balance. But there is no single place that holds "the customer's balance." There are three. Aldermont Bank runs three core banking systems, one for each bank it used to be. Checking accounts opened before 2008 live o… Read More