Glossary

Definitions of seventeen key terms introduced throughout the book, with chapter references.

The following terms are introduced and developed across the book. Each entry indicates the chapter where the term is first defined.

Advisory architecture (Ch. 5): Architecture that describes what should exist: reference models, capability maps, target state diagrams. These artefacts can be updated without touching the system. Contrast with binding architecture.

Alignment-industrial complex (Ch. 6): The supply chain of consulting firms, system integrators, and governance vendors whose revenue depends on the coordination layer persisting. Their recommendations converge on more alignment rather than structural correction.

Autonomous unit (Ch. 10): The smallest organisational structure that can be held accountable for a complete business outcome. The unit owns its process, services, data, and contracts. It eliminates the ambiguity that previously required translation.

Binding architecture (Ch. 5): Architecture that embeds decisions in code, interfaces, and data contracts, making some changes easy and others hard. An engineer working within a binding architecture knows what she can change independently.

Context concentration ratio (Ch. 7): For a critical business process, the number of people who can describe the process's actual behaviour from memory, accurately enough to diagnose a failure. A ratio of one or two represents single-point-of-failure risk on the organisation's most important knowledge.

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