Gartner Research

Create a Reference
Architecture Program
That Facilitates
Composability

Enterprise Architecture Research Team

8 March 2022
Create a Reference Architecture Program That
Facilitates Composability
Peer & Practitioner Research Published 8 March 2022 - ID G00767504 - 4 min read

By Analyst(s): Enterprise Architecture Research Team

Initiatives: Digital Business Change Initiatives; Digital Products and Services

Enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders can use

this article to start their journey of creating a reference architecture
program that directly supports the goal of building a composable
business.

As enterprise architecture (EA) and technology innovation (TI) leaders embark on or

continue the journey of enabling resilient growth for organizations (see Enterprise
Architecture Primer for 2022), the idea of composability keeps popping up (see
Becoming Composable: A Gartner Trend Insight Report). While this idea is by no means
new, the technology landscape has evolved to a place where composability is more
achievable than ever before. One way to realize composability is to build or update a
reference architecture (RA) program that begins with enabling composability as the goal.
The recently published Ignition Guide to Building Reference Architectures for a
Composable Business is a great place to start.

This article summarizes key lessons related to composability from the comprehensive
Ignition Guide mentioned above. Please note that the full research has 12 tools and
templates that you can download and customize to suit your needs.

Ensure a Shared Understanding of Composability

Whether you are instantiating a new RA program or revitalizing an existing one, ensuring
that key stakeholders (e.g., business and IT leaders, solution architects and program
managers, application developers and designers, etc.) have a shared understanding of
what composability actually means for your organization is an essential starting point.
Figure 1 offers Gartner’s perspective on the ontology of composability.

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Figure 1: Three Principles of Composability

It may be helpful to consider the tenets of composability defined above as parts of a

hierarchy: Modularity is at the heart of composability. However, to be able to compose any
given set of modules, those modules need to exist in a defined, shared architecture that
describes the scope and means of connectivity between building blocks.

The architecture principle includes three distinct properties that help describe modules,
with which you’ll need to be familiar:

■ Autonomy: Modules are self-contained and can be easily changed or swapped

without affecting the system.

■ Orchestration: The modules agree on their methods of interaction, and interfaces

support the prevailing standards and protocols.

■ Discovery: Business building blocks are identified, monitored and managed. It is

possible to find the module and what it does through metadata.

Ensure That RAs Support Composability

At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s important to ensure that the RA components you are
building do, in fact, support a composable business. A simple checklist of nine questions
can help verify composability for each RA component you develop (see Table 1).

Gartner, Inc. | G00767504 Page 2 of 5

The more yeses you are able to check off, the more optimized the component will be
for business composability. (For a shortlist of RA components to consider, see Figure
4 and Table 5 in Ignition Guide to Building Reference Architectures for a Composable
Business.)

Table 1: Business Composability Checklist

(Enlarged table in Appendix)

Work Toward Federated RA Creation and Ownership

A successful RA program can’t be a “one-man band.” Although EA may be heavily involved
in the rollout of an initial RA program, EA typically does not have the bandwidth or subject
matter expertise required to assume primary responsibility for all RA creation. Accordingly,
one of the goals of your RA program should be to work toward the distribution of
responsibility and ownership over discrete RA components to associates who are closer to
the use case.

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While there will always be a set of core, enterprise-level RAs that should remain under
central management, look for opportunities to federate ownership of RAs that are
applicable to, and used by, limited local audiences.

Bonus Round: Going a Step Further by Embedding or Automating RAs

The most progressive EA leaders ensure that RA adoption strategies account for
organizational maturity and diverse user experience needs. To do this, you should evolve
your reference implementations to be progressively more automated and embedded in
end-user workflows (see Figure 2).

Successfully embedding and automating elements of your RA program is a significant

step toward the goal of a composable business, in which individuals compose and
recompose solutions independently, from high-quality building blocks and reusable
assets.

Figure 2. Reference Architecture User Experience Maturity Curve

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 Recommended by the Authors
Ignition Guide to Building Reference Architectures for a Composable Business

Quick Answer: What Does It Mean to Be ‘Composable’?EA Unlocks Composability

Use Gartner’s Reference Model to Deliver Intelligent Composable Business Applications

Innovation Insight for Composable Modularity Of Packaged Business Capabilities

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intelligence, machine learning, algorithms, software, or related technologies.

Gartner, Inc. | G00767504 Page 5 of 5

Table 1: Business Composability Checklist

Pillar of Business Composability Checklist Y/N

⬤ 1. Will this RA (or RA component) save time and

effort for your developer teams in future?

⬤ 2. Can this RA (or RA component) be reused by

other developer teams across the enterprise for a
similar or different use case?

⬤ 3. Did you collaborate with individuals outside your

immediate team to build or co-create this RA (or RA
component)?

⬤ 4. Have you built or are planning to build reference

implementations (e.g., guides, prototypes) to
support future use?

⬤ 5. Is the new RA (or RA component) you are

creating mapped to one or more existing business
capabilities in your organization?

⬤ 6. Does this RA (or RA component) model a self-

contained building block that can be assembled
with other building blocks to create new products
and services?

⬤ 7. Have your EAs and relevant business

stakeholders reviewed and/or approved the RA

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 you have created for reuse?

⬤ 8. Does your RA component encourage the use of

APIs or microservices or other advanced modular
technologies that enable rapid integration?

⬤ 9. Is the new RA (or RA component) mapped to

future-state technology roadmaps for the
enterprise?

⬤ 10. Is your RA component designed for reuse

regardless of the technology it’s implemented with
(for example, source code language-agnostic,
platform and database-agnostic)?

⬤ Composable Thinking (a mindset to guide business change in the face of opportunity and uncertainty)
⬤ Composable Business Architecture (a blueprint of the business to manage the pace of business change)
⬤ Composable Technology (the digital resources to digitalize business)

Source: Gartner (March 2022)

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