Lego Analogy

This blog post summaries information related to "Lego-like" a.k.a. the "Lego analogy".

The Lego analogy is a popular way to explain how complex things can be made simpler by using small, standard parts. Think of a massive Lego castle. If you tried to carve that castle out of a single, solid block of wood, it would be nearly impossible to change later. But because it’s made of Legos, it’s much easier to manage. Here is the Lego analogy broken down into four simple points:

• Modularity (The "Building Blocks") Instead of one giant, messy project, you break everything down into small, manageable pieces. In Legos: You have individual bricks, wheels, and windows. In the Real World: This could be individual features in an app (like a "login" button) or different departments in a company.
• Standardization (The "Studs and Tubes") Every Lego brick has the same little bumps (studs) on top and holes on the bottom. Because these "interfaces" are always the same, any two pieces can snap together, no matter what they look like. The Lesson: If you make the "connectors" standard, you can swap parts in and out without breaking the whole system.
• Reusability (Don't Reinvent the Wheel) If you need a tower for your castle, you don't have to invent a "tower-making" process. You just use the same bricks you used to build the wall. In Coding: If a programmer writes a great piece of code to "calculate taxes," they can just "snap" that same code into five different apps instead of writing it from scratch five times.
• Scalability (Starting Small) You can start with a tiny house and, brick by brick, turn it into a city. You don't need a new "system" to get bigger; you just add more blocks.

Where the Analogy Fails

While it sounds perfect, experts often warn that "real life isn't quite like Legos" because:

• Glue: In software, pieces don't always "snap" perfectly; sometimes you have to write "glue code" to make them stick.
• Decay: Lego bricks don't change over time, but software and business rules do. A "brick" you used three years ago might not fit a "brick" made today because the technology has evolved.

This image from this post to LinkedIn. The point is to show different "phases" that information might exist in.  Rat data, sorted by some category like maybe color, arranged, presented visually so humans can understand it, and ultra-organized and explained with a story:

This article, A Deeper Dive into LEGO Bricks and Data Stories, builds on the first and enhances the descriptions of the categories:

1. Data collection: You gather data on something to measure and understand its performance or behaviors.
2. Data preparation: You cleanse, organize, and combine the data so it’s ready to be analyzed.
3. Data visualization: You visualize the data so people can more easily monitor and understand what’s happening.
4. Data analysis: You examine the data for insights that matter to a specific audience.
5. Data storytelling: You explain your insights with narrative and visuals so they resonate and inspire change.

Another article, The Lego Analogy: Crafting Enterprise Architecture with Skill Depth and Breadth, explains how the Lego analogy to explain enterprise architecture. (This is another version of that same article.

The primary idea of this article is "building module by module".  Each Lego is a module.  Put together the modules that need by getting the right Lego.

The Lego Analogy is used by this article to understand data standards and registers.