Architecture Governance Flashcards
Architecture Governance
The practice by which Enterprise Architectures and other architectures are managed and controlled at an enterprise-wide level.
Architecture Governance includes
- Implementing a system of controls over the creation and monitoring of all architectural components and activities, to ensure the effective introduction, implementation, and evolution of architectures within the organization
- Implementing a system to ensure compliance with internal and external standards and regulatory obligations
- Establishing processes that support effective management of the above processes within agreed parameters
- Developing practices that ensure accountability to a clearly identified stakeholder community, both inside and outside the organization
What is Governance?
Governance is about ensuring that business is conducted properly.
Characteristics of Governance
- Discipline. All involved parties will have a commitment to adhere to procedures, processes, and authority structures established by the organization.
- Transparency. All actions implemented and their decision support will be available for inspection by authorized organizations and provider parties.
- Independence. All processes, decision-making, and mechanisms used will be established so as to minimize or avoid potential conflicts of interest.
- Accountability. Identifiable groups within the organization – e.g., governance boards who take actions or make decisions – are authorized and accountable for their actions.
- Responsibility. Each contracted party is required to act responsibly to the organization and its stakeholders.
- Fairness. All decisions taken, processes used, and their implementation will not be allowed to create unfair advantage to any one particular party.
Architecture Governance
Phase G of the TOGAF ADM is dedicated to Implementation Governance, which concerns itself with the realization of the architecture through change projects.
Covers the management and control of all aspects of the development and evolution of architectures.
It needs to be supported by an Architecture Governance Framework which assists in identifying effective processes so that the business responsibilities associated with Architecture Governance can be elucidated, communicated, and managed effectively.
Key Architecture Governance Processes
- Policy Management and Take-On
- Compliance
- Dispensation
- Monitoring and Reporting
- Business Control
- Environment Management
Architecture Board
Cross-organizational element that oversees the implementation of the governance strategy; typically comprise a group of executives responsible for the review and maintenance of the overall architecture
Goals of the Architecture Board
- Provide the basis for all decision-making with regard to changes to the architectures
- Consistency between sub-architectures
- Establish targets for re-use of components
- Flexibility of Enterprise Architecture; to meet business needs and utilize new technologies
- Enforce Architecture Compliance
- Improve the maturity level of architecture discipline within the organization
- Ensure that the discipline of architecture-based development is adopted
- Support a visible escalation capability for out-of-bounds decisions
Architecture Contracts
Joint agreements between development partners and sponsors on the deliverables, quality, and fitness-for-purpose of an architecture.
Complementary processes to adopt an Architecture Compliance strategy
- The Architecture function will be required to prepare a series of Project Architectures; i.e., project-specific views of the Enterprise Architecture that illustrate how the Enterprise Architecture impacts on the major projects within the organization (see ADM Phases A to F)
- The IT Governance function will define a formal Architecture Compliance Review process for reviewing the compliance of projects to the Enterprise Architecture
The Purpose of Architecture Compliance Reviews
- To catch errors in the project architecture early, and thereby reduce the cost and risk of changes required later in the lifecycle; this in turn means that the overall project time is shortened, and that the business gets the bottom-line benefit of the architecture development faster
- To ensure the application of best practices to architecture work
- To provide an overview of the compliance of an architecture to mandated enterprise standards
- To identify where the standards themselves may require modification
- To identify services that are currently application-specific but might be provided as part of the enterprise infrastructure
- To document strategies for collaboration, resource sharing, and other synergies across multiple architecture teams
- To take advantage of advances in technology
- To communicate to management the status of technical readiness of the project
- To identify key criteria for procurement activities (e.g., for inclusion in Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) product RFI/RFP documents)
- To identify and communicate significant architectural gaps to product and service providers
Establishing the architecture practice within an organization requires the design of
- The Business Architecture of the architecture practice that will highlight the Architecture Governance, architecture processes, architecture organizational structure, architecture information requirements, architecture products, etc.
- The Data Architecture that would define the structure of the organization’s Enterprise Continuum and Architecture Repository
- The Application Architecture specifying the functionality and/or applications services required to enable the architecture practice
- The Technology Architecture that depicts the architecture practice’s infrastructure requirements and deployment in support of the architecture applications and Enterprise Continuum
