A complete guide to the architecture process in Homeland Security.

Homeland Security guide for Solutions Architecture. [Part-1]

A no non-sense approach to SA!

This article is a short, personal summary/brief made from the document published by The Department of Homeland Security Enterprise Business Management Office (EBMO) and Homeland Security Systems Engineering & Development Institute (HSSEDI), titled:

GUIDE FOR CREATING USEFUL SOLUTION ARCHITECTURES.

To make it easier to read and reference, we divided this article into 3 parts:

• Part 1: The introduction and general SA process explanation. (here)
• Part 2: Detailed description of SA graphics with examples.
• Part 3: How the SA process is used in DHS. ( coming soon )

Note: Although, it sounds cool to have Homeland Security involved in a technical document! that is not what this article about. the original document is long, a bit un-organized and often very repeatitive, sometimes repeating the same concept 5-6 times in a single page!
And even though it’s authored in a governmental institute, it does contain a wealth of useful and practical information, the sort of what you’d learn the hard way, by wasting a whole bunch of tax-money on delayed and failed projects! so it’s the real deal: battle field-tested, expensive lessons learned! if you are an architect, especially in a large, enterprise organization, you do want to read and follow some of these recommendations!
You can find the original document here.

The research was done to address issues at DHS IT programs, including facts:

• Solution Architecture is not well defined, and is neither standardized nor consistently used across DHS IT programs.
• Solution Architecture best practices have not been fully incorporated into DHS processes and guidance.
• Solution Architecture is not integrated with DHS’ agile development approach.

What is Solution Architecture?

“A program-level solution vision and architecture description consisting of abstract solution building blocks. It is comprised of multiple integrated views that conform to standardized and/or “fit-for-purpose” viewpoints and stakeholder concerns. It influences, guides, and supports SELC activities.”