Principles of Architecture

Let's understand first what you mean by 'Principles'?

Principles are basic guidelines and rules that inform as well as support the organization by which they sets about fulfilling its mission. Principles may be established at any or all of three levels depending on the organization:
* Enterprise principles
* Information Technology (IT) principles
* Architecture principles

We can define Architectural principles in various ways:

Architectural principles:
* Are statements of preferred practice that reflect a level of consensus among different organizations within an enterprise, such as IT, business units and support groups.

* Are long-term simple and direct statements and frame how an organization makes decisions about IT. All these principles are critical to achieving the objectives and goals of a company.

* Help in establishing a context for design decisions so that business criteria can be translated into specifications and language.

Then technology managers can use this information as they plan, design, develop, implement, test, and deploy an information system's IT resources and assets across the enterprise.

* Require to develop a framework which includes appropriate procedures and policies to support the implementation of the principles. Procedures and Polices are used to support the governance's application to architecture for its information and technology components.

Qualities of Principles:

There are five criteria that define a good set of principles:
* Simplicity
* Relevancy
* Consistency of interpretation
* Granularity
* Stability

How Architecture principles are used?

These principles focus on two main areas.

They are used to govern the process of:
* Developing the architecture - Architecture principles are needed to guide the development, maintenance and use of the enterprise architecture.

* Implementing the architecture - This means establishing the tenets and related guidance for designing and developing an IT system.

I hope you will keep all the qualities of Architecture principles in mind.