Architecture Management
Definition
"Provide an understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization."
The practice requires organizations to:
- Ensure the organization's strategy is supported with a target architecture
- Ensure the organization's architecture is continually evolving to the target state
Key Terms
Architecture Principles: "a set of norms and rules for the use and deployment of all resources and assets across an organization."
Interoperability: "the ability of systems, applications, services, or any other architectural component to function together in a coordinated way."
Processes
Architecture Governance
- Analyse the organization's requirements
- Develop and agree architecture vision
- Review the architecture
Development of a Target Architecture and Roadmap
- Identify requirements
- Document current architecture
- Develop target architecture
- Design standards, frameworks, and guidelines
- Design, agree, and communicate architecture roadmap
Ongoing Architectural Control
- Identify architecturally significant plans and events
- Check for conformance to the target architecture
- Escalate non-conformance
- Review progress against the architecture roadmap
Key Metrics
| Metric | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Fulfilment of target architecture requirements | Architecture effectiveness |
| Impact of architectural constraints on strategy | Strategic alignment |
| Target architecture completeness and quality | Design maturity |
| Unassessed architecturally significant changes | Governance gaps |
| Projects/changes not aligned with target architecture | Conformance |
| Progress on architecture roadmap implementation | Execution progress |
Key Roles
- Architect role
- Architecture board
Recommendations for Success
- Align with business strategy
- Embrace agility and continual improvement, human centricity
- Build strong relationships
- Focus on the right level of granularity
- Leverage existing frameworks and tools
- Champion data governance and integration
- Embrace security and privacy
- Measure and communicate value
- Foster a culture of innovation
Software Tools
- Enterprise architecture management tools
- Knowledge and document management tools
- Analysis and reporting tools
- Capacity management tools, CMS tools
- Risk management tools
- Collaboration and communication tools
- Workflow and task management tools
- Monitoring and event management tools
- Solution design and development tools