Right back at the beginning of this blog I offered a basic distinction between architecture and design - Architecture focused on identifying and championing the use of standard (exemplar) building blocks and standard structures of those ABBs, while Design solves specific business problems using IT systems - hopefully based on these standard parts and structures.
But since then almost all of this blog has been about architecture, its ABB catalogues and frameworks - maybe now is the time to go Solution Design modelling!
First and foremost - why do I now say "modelling"? And very specifically "Solution Design modelling? We probably agree, in general terms that at it's most general anything that "represents reality" is a model of that reality - whether it be a financial spreadsheet or an Airfix(r) kit. And, I hope without fear of contradition, our ABB Framework is a model of the buildoing blocks the enterprise wants to use in its business and IT systems.
But the difference is that ABBs and their Framework is an organised collection (or catalogue) of parts' descriptions - as distinct from a construction made from those parts - the difference between the box of LEGO(R) bricks, and a Lego model made from those bricks.
So, from now on (and actually up to now too but I never said), whenever I'm discussing a construction of something, I am modelling and I'm working on a model. When I'm discussing a collection of somethings (that's plural), I am organising and cataloging, working on a framework.
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