While architects often enjoy academically designing great designs without constraints, that is not what the real world is made of. All projects have constraints. It is critical for architects to clearly understand them and pragmatically make decisions for successful solutions within these constraints.

Time:
Time is often considered one of the most precious resources an organization can manage. It hovers heavy over every project, every person, every contract, every progress report and every decision for an organization. In IT architecture, time is rarely on your side. With so much multi-tasking and initiatives with such large scopes and scales of today, the pressure to deliver within shorter and shorter windows of time push architects to new levels of triage. Understanding and planning architectural decisions which align to an organization’s time constraints is one of the most critical responsibilities they must assume.

Money:
A component that many architecture teams underestimate is money. There is always a limited amount of money available to build/purchase the solution as well as a limited amount of money available to support it.

Resources:
Solutions and Infrastructures are architected, developed, engineered and supported by humans who have the time, energy, skills and interest to make the specific initiative successful. However, an IT organization often has access to a limited number of these resources. Furthermore, these resources are often in short supply compared to the demand for new solutions and infrastructures.

Perspective Capture Questions:

a) What unique time pressures does this specific engagement have for creating this solution?

b) What pieces of functional or systemic qualities can be decomposed to different time periods?

c) What monetary pressures does this specific engagement have for creating this solution?

     i) What is the Capital Budget projected?

     ii) What is the Operating Budget projected?

     iii) What is the Return on Investment Criteria?


d) What resource pressures does this specific engagement have for creating this solution?

     i) What are the Resources needed for architecture, development, engineering, deployment and support of this initiative?

     ii) What resources are available to the initiative for architecture, development, engineering, deployment and support?


e) What are the specific risk tolerances of the solution team and or the supporting stake-holding organization for new technologies, techniques, process and people utilization?


f) Are the specific risk tolerances for the initiative higher or lower for any specific areas?