Testing Enterprise Architectures

Blogpost as published on Capping IT off: http://www.capgemini.com/technology-blog/

As testers we know that being involved in an early stage of the development cycle will save money on defect solving in the last stages of the development cycle. This is also confirmed and visualized by Boehm. As a frequent test(manager) in chain testing assignments I see much more then only the software that is to be used, but also get involved in the processes that are set up around the usage of the software (and even non-software-usage-processes) and more than once have I found that it would have been very nice to have been involved in the ‘design’ of those too, the earlier the better. So that got me thinking, what is before processes and software? Well, for instance; Enterprise Architecture.
And then I really got going. Are Enterprise Architectures testable? And will the impact be the same if a tester is involved in setting up one as the Boehm curve says, if so, what money will that save? What ís the financial impact of an error in an Enterprise Architecture, or for that manner, what is the image damage when an enterprise architecture isn’t set up right or is the impact of a defect in the set up architecture that big, that it will affect the whole existence of an organization? Then I got more practical; how does one test an Enterprise Architecture? I think to answer that question is to firstly get clarity on the requirements of an Enterprise Architecture and that’s where the crux is, because most requirements that I found, mind: I only did some brief investigation here, on Enterprise Architectures aren’t very measurable or SMART (or checked for that matter). So in able to test an Enterprise Architecture in the future, I plea for starting to involve testers right at the setup, so we can learn and develop this area of expertise, I’m convinced that it will have huge benefits to have a validated architecture in the future, which –if Boehm ís applicable- will save a lot of money. I’m very interested to hear more opinions on this, so please don’t hesitate to contact me on this one, I’d love to hear it! To be continued (I’m sure!)…