IT Architecture Vision /
Sprint Zero Architecture
The Funny Hat Shop - Online
IT Architecture Vision Template - for Solution Architects
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Problem Description 3
Problem Statement 3
Business Vision Statement 4
Change Drivers & Opportunities 4
Business Objectives / Capability Impact 5
Architecture Vision 6
Architecture Assumptions 6
Constraints & Risks 6
As-is Conceptual Architecture Diagram 6
To-Be Conceptual Architecture Diagram 7
Context Diagram 7
C4 System Context Diagram 8
High-Level Non-Functional Requirements 9
Availability 9
Performance 9
Volumes 9
User Interactions 9
Business Continuity 9
Security 9
Operations and Monitoring 10
Networking 10
User Interface Requirements 10
Architectural Requirements 10
Proposed Solution Option 10
Costing Estimate 11
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Problem Description
Problem Statement
The Funny Hat Shop wants to sell their existing hats in stock online. During COVID-19, the
company realised they are not making sales as they used to and believe an online e-commerce
web site will restore their sales by selling their hats online.
Stakeholder Business Business Problem/Concerns
Capability/Function
Web site Sale Sell existing stock of hats online
Customer Basket Customer register online before or after adding items to
the basket
Warehouse Stock Management Do not sell items not in stock – check stock system for
Manager stock levels
Customer Account Secure login – own username and password, or google
or Facebook
Customer Payment On checkout basket –use secure payment gateway for
payment (PayPal or Credit Card)
Customer Communications Send automatic emails when order is completed
Order successfully to customers
Warehouse Stock Management Send order to warehouse manager to pick items as per
Manager Order order
Delivery Deliveries Integrate solution with delivery company to request a
Company pick up and delivery request
Customer Communications On successful delivery, send automatic invoice email
Invoicing
Business Vision Statement
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The Funny Hat Shop vision is to be able to sell all their stock they also sell in the shop on the
internet. The solution should include cost effective options to host the e-commerce web site.
Change Drivers & Opportunities
Here is a list of key business drivers and opportunities to implement the e-commerce web site
for The Funny Hat Shop:
● The business outcome is to drive additional sales by implementing an e-commerce web
site to sell its products online
● The web site should be easy to use, but fast and friendly to use on any channel, such as
mobile phones, tablets and personal computers.
● The Funny Hat Shop made an agreement with an external Vendor for deliveries of the
products to the customers. The solution needs to integrate with the delivery companies
API’s.
● The solution should integrate with the existing stock management system used in the
warehouse.
● The web site can only be accessed from America, Europe and South Africa.
● The web site’s availability should support a 24/7 uptime
● Consider responsiveness and develop using agile methodologies
● Privacy of customer data should be handle as confidential and security should be
implemented
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Business Objectives / Capability Impact
Figure 1 - Business Capability Model
Capability Description New/Migrate/
Change
E-Commerce Web site to sell hat products New
Customer Accounts Store and manage customer information New
Customer Insight Basic reporting of customer purchase history New
Order Management Order management will change due to orders Change
being purchased online.
Product Products now have to also include images of the Change
Management products
Delivery Service Integrate with an external delivery vendor New
solution and manage status of deliveries
Invoicing Invoices will now be delivered automatically to Change
customer email on successful delivery
Communication Include a email service to send automatic emails New
to customers
IT Support IT support will include the support of the new e- Change
commerce web site.
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Architecture Vision
To provide an e-commerce web application to support the sales of hat products for The Funny
Hat Shop. The solution architecture should implement the solution using the following
architecture principles:
● Business continuity - ensure the system has a disaster recovery plan included
● Ease of use - Keep the technology selection simple and easy to adapt and use
● Data security - Ensure the data is secure at rest and in transit
● Technology independence - the design should include application components that are
independent of the infrastructure it runs on
Architecture Assumptions
The following architecture assumptions is made based on the drivers and objectives of the
business problem:
● The stock management system is hosted on Amazon AWS with an API capability to
access and update stock levels
● The delivery Vendor has an API capability to send and get delivery status information
Constraints & Risks
Find a list of constraints relating to the initial business requirements:
● The web site can only be accessed within America, Europe and South Africa
Risk Mitigation Owner
Project Not Delivered in Business are willing to get contractors to Business User
time speed up development (Sarah)
IT Operational Cost Might Solution Architecture will include auto Solution Architect
be high scaling capability
As-is Conceptual Architecture Diagram
There is no as-is architecture as this is a new solution integrating with existing systems.
To-Be Conceptual Architecture Diagram
Context Diagram
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Figure 2 - Context Diagram
The above context diagram depicts the interaction between the different systems and actors.
The following interactions is expected and applications impacted:
● Customers will interact with the online web site by adding items to a basket, complete a
checkout process and pay for the items using a secure payment gateway
● The online web site will interact with the stock management system for the following
interactions:
○ Get Stock Item Details to be displayed on the web site. This should include an
image
○ Get Stock Level for a specific item
○ The stock management should update the stock level when an order is complete
● The stock management system will send a pick up and delivery request to the Vendor
Delivery company’s API
● There should be a scheduled job to check the delivery status and update the online web
site when the delivery is done successfully.
● An email with order details should be generated when the order is generated on the
stock management system
● An email with invoice details should be generated when the order is delivered to the
customer by checking the Vendor Delivery Company’s API for delivery status completed
C4 System Context Diagram
This is to indicate a different style of modelling architecture. You can either use the context
diagram technique or C4 Systems Context Diagram.
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Figure 4 - C4 Systems Context Diagram
High-Level Non-Functional Requirements
Availability
● Solution should be highly available 24/7 with 99.99% availability
● Batches are expected to run to check delivery status
● Planned downtime for Monday mornings 1 to 2 hours only at 1am.
Performance
● Solution should allowed for auto scalability on evenings and weekends
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● The web site response time should less than 2 seconds
● Allow for a thousand hit per day
Volumes
● Product images are stored on AWS S3 Buckets for the stock management. Images are about
50kb average
● The Funny Hat Shop has 200 different products
● Allow for an initial 100gb of data storage with a 10% growth expected each year
User Interactions
● The company expect 500 customer for the first 3 months, and 2000 after 12 months
● Allow for at least 10 concurrent users accessing the web site
● User locations should only be from America, Europe and South Africa
Business Continuity
● Include backups with replication of the database
● Use multi availability zones in each region
● Customer data from that each country should be stored only in availability zones within
those country’s region
Security
● Authorize and authenticate user by using OAuth, using either Google or Facebook logins
● Secure data at rest and in transit on all services
● Implement audit controls on data changes
● Use X509 Certificate on the Web Application Container
Operations and Monitoring
● Implement monitoring for both the health of the web site and database
● The solution should include exception handling and alert on any errors
Networking
● Create a VPC on AWS for all the regions of the solution
● Create a public subnet for the web front end and private subnets for the back end
database and other services
● Use a load balancer to balance the incoming traffic to the web application
● Create firewall rules for traffic to the Delivery Vendor API
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User Interface Requirements
● Implement a responsive web design that will be accessed via mobile, tablet or web
browsers
Architectural Requirements
● Use AWS Cloud platform
● Implement a Dev, QA, UAT and Production VPC on AWS
● Detail of the development stack will be in the solution options
● Solution should follow a Microservices architecture by implementing the solution
components as containers
● Use DevOps pipelines to cater for automated deployments for the Continuous
Integration and Continuous Deployment pipelines.
Proposed Solution Option
● Use EC2 to host the web application using apache as a web server
● Create application layer on EC2 for business rules and access to the data layer
● The auto scaling groups should be used to automatically scale in and out depending on
the incoming load from the load balancer
● The application load balancer
● For caching use Elastic Cache to cache product data
● Images will be stored on the stock management S3 bucket
● The domain will be hosted through Route 53 Hosted Zone
● Data will be stored on MySQL on Amazon RDS
● AWS Cloudwatch will send alarms for any health issues on the EC2 instances
● Amazon SES will be used to send emails to customers
● Amazon CloudFront will be used for content delivery
● Amazon API Gateway to access Vendor Delivery API’s
Costing Estimate
T-Shirt Sizing Exercise
Size Estimate Work
Range
S 0-2 weeks
M 2-4 weeks
L 4-8 weeks
XL 8-16 weeks
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Building Block / Description T-Shirt Weeks
Epics Size
Web Application Building the web application with functionality to XL 10
Front End list products, add items to a basket
Database Create a database that will store basket items, M 2
customer account data and web site sales
Emails Service Create an email service using Amazon SES to M 2
send order and invoice emails
Orders Integrate with the Stock Management System to S 1
generate an order
Invoices Integrate with the Invoicing System to generate S 1
an invoice when the order is delivered
Deliveries Integrate with the Vendor Delivery API’s to L 4
request pickup and delivery. Include API calls to
get delivery status
Security Build authentication for customers to log into the S 1
web site and create an account. Include the
option to use facebook and Google logins
Infrastructure Setup the AWS VPC, subnets, EC2 instances, M 3
and all other Cloud requirements, including the
Dev, QA, UAT and Production environments
Payments Integrate with a payment gateway to allow M 2
customers to pay for the items in the basket
Total 24
An estimate of 24 weeks is made by a collaborative session by the team. This is based on a
team effort of 2 developers, 1 business analyst, the solution architect, QA tester and scrum
master. This effort is not done by the architect but usually by the project manager or scrum
master. The total team value per hour is $180 per hour. If the team works a 40 hour week for 24
weeks, the total amounts to 960 hours, and total amount to $172,800.00.
Cost Category QTY Money Value ($)
Development Cost 960 $172,800.00
Vendor Software (Integration) 1 $ 1,500.00
Infrastructure (AWS Cost) 1 $ 50,000.00
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Any recurring costs for 12 months. E.g. Annual 1 $ 50,000.00
Fees, software licences, rentals, etc.
Totals: $274,300.00
IT Architecture Vision Template - for Solution Architects