Technical reference architectures

Today's approaches to solution development are still primarily based on "handcrafting" and bear little relationship to the asset-based engineering methods so successfully used in other disciplines. In this paper we argue that these handcrafting approaches have passed their "sell-by" dates, and a more disciplined and constrained method of system development is needed. We focus particularly on the definition of technical architectures as the basis for constructing applications. We argue that a constrained set of reference architectures for a given set of problem domains is not only feasible, but mandatory for large-scale enterprise development, and we provide some example fragments of reference architectures for the administrative systems domain. These reference architectures and their successors, harvested and continually refreshed from successful consulting engagements, will form the basis of IBM's asset-based approach to solutions development in the future. © 1999 IBM.