Refactoring the Architecture 'Resources' Repository

Back in April 2005, IASA, the International Association of Software Architects, formed a working group focused on software architectural "Foundations and Taxonomy" with the specific goal of charting the "largely uncharted" profession of IT architecture.

The IASA F&T Workgroup began its work by identifying valuable architectural resources that already exist from other organizations. Then, after locating, qualifying, sorting, coordinating, and explaining available information relevant to IT architects, the Workgroup's mission was to fill-in missing "holes" in the existing resources with new complementary contributions. The ultimate deliverable will provide the necessary foundation to achieve IASA's vision and meet the needs of the IASA membership.

As an IASA Fellow and member of the IASA F&T Workgroup team, I volunteered to build the Architecture 'Resources' Repository. In tackling this project, I adopted a strategy similar to the approach I took when I developed ITscout, a free web site that organizes and describes IT products. While products certainly play an important role in the field of architecture, there are many other vital and essential topics besides tools that need to be understood such as frameworks and patterns.

Please note that this implementation of the Architecture 'Resources' Repository IS NOT THE IASA TAXONOMY. The IASA Taxonomy being created by the F&T Workgroup is still a work-in-progress, a beta version of which will be introduced in London this coming April, 2006.

The Architecture 'Resources' Repository that I created can be accessed using the following login information:

URL:	http://www.ITscout.org/ITguide
Username:	architecture
Password:	itguide

The visual "Flashmap" model used for organizing architecture information is a simple 2-shelf "bookcase" containing several sets of different colored books. After several months of experience with the original prototype, I decided to make some minor changes to the Flashmap graphic by refactoring the classification hierarchy. The new category tree is presented below. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Enterprise Architecture
Cross-Domain Architectures
Software Architecture

Frameworks
Patterns
Methodologies
Governance
Other Concepts

Industry Standards
Implementations
Products
Consulting Firms

Blogs
Web Sites
Articles
Books
Magazines
Events
Other Resources