Software Fortresses: Modeling Enterprise Architectures

2.6. Treaty–Ally–Responsibility Cards

When treaties are very simple (one fortress interacting with one other, no intermediaries, no third parties), FAR cards may be all that are necessary to provide an architecture overview. In many real-life scenarios, however, the overall treaties that define the enterprise architecture are more complex. In these cases you may find yourself chaining together a large sequence of FAR cards to get a good architectural overview. Those itty-bitty tables at Starbucks (where else would one do an architectural review?) may not have enough room for the entire treaty, if diagrammed exclusively with FAR cards.

When you need more than two or three FAR cards to keep track of all the treaty responsibilities, it is probably ...