Viewpoint overload? No! Think "out of the box"!

Feeling overwhelmed?  Too many options?  Physical, operational, infrastructure.... "You've claimed they're not synonyms, but my word I can easily use them as such!!"

I agree. The distinctions I've been drawing between all these things can be subtle  - but these subtleties are critical to ensuring a well designed solution.  These last few posts have exposed them to be part of three "orthogonal pairs of viewpoints" that I claim enable solution designers of all persuasions to think about their IT system in a properly shared and mutually understandable way.  I hope to justify that claim soon, but also recognise thst they can be hard to get your head around. So first I want to offer you a visual thinking model that should cement the nature of their inter-relationships.

I want you to think "out of the box".  Literally from outside of a box, looking in...

So please go find yourself an empty square cardboard box (any size will do, but maybe small enough to put unobtrusively on your desk yet big enough to write on its sides).  Also search out a pen, a pair of scissors or maybe a sharp craftsman's knife, and some sticky tape.

For now seal the box up, with nothing inside.  It's empty....

Randomly choose "the front", draw a vertical line down the middle, and write "functional" on the left, and "operational" on the right.

Turn to the top, and continue the line front to back, but lightly. Draw another line across the middle, left to right, and write "logical" in front (straddle the front-back line) and "physical" behind (ditto).

Choose a side, and continue the top line down to the bottom, but lightly. Draw another line in the middle, back to front, and write "application" above (straddle the vertical line) and "infrastructure" below (ditto).

Turn back to the front, and continue the side's horizontal line across, lightly, probably through the words you wrote earlier.

If you're a completer-finisher like me you'll have an overwhelming desire to complete all three lines around the box... Go on, do it... You've now got eight "cubelettes" and six words.  These eight cubelettes represent eight powerfully different ways of using the three pairs of viewpoints...

... so, using the scissors or knife, cut off the eight corners!  Nice, neat triangular holes into the box - what can you see inside?  Nothing!!! The box is empty... in fact you can see right through, through the opposite corner's hole, a viewpoint that is as different in every respect from the one you're looking through as could be...