Descrição 1
To support democratized digital delivery at speed, heads of EA must focus on democratizing the EA governance process, which includes reforming and rethinking traditional architecture review boards. Adaptive EA governance, which uses CoPs and MVA, succeeds where traditional, heavy-handed architecture review boards fail. The goal is to support fusion teams by replacing one-size-fits-all governance with adaptive governance that contextualizes decision rights, while balancing product needs with enterprise goals, risk and agility. One way this can be done is through the use of the MVA. The MVA includes a subset of the enterprise reference architecture and privileges the aspects that are most needed to deliver products and solutions (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Components of a Minimum Viable Architecture
The MVA’s purpose is to present an architecture framework that is sufficient to underpin the delivery of core product features and provide a solid foundation for future growth and development. It can be segmented against strategy alignment, product design and solution delivery, with an emphasis on simplicity, flexibility and the ability to adapt to changes and feedback.
One of the biggest challenges that heads of EA face is creating an MVA that delivery teams find useful. When solution teams understand that they can use it to get their work done faster, usage grows organically and voluntarily, which removes the need to impose governance mandates to drive adoption. Effective heads of EA combine best-in-class technology and practices in a set of standard services that enable business technologists and fusion teams to build and manage higher-quality technology solutions (see Building a Platform for Product Team Productivity (adidas)).
While EA may be more involved in the initial rollout of an MVA, it often does not have the bandwidth or the local expertise required to assume primary responsibility for creating all deliverables. Instead of trying to own all of the deliverables associated with the MVA, EAs should establish a repeatable process and methodology for selecting, building and managing them. This process should involve actively seeking out and naming subject matter experts who have accountability for the building and maintenance of the deliverables through their full life cycles. The target audience for this is both federated architecture representatives and capable members of distributed fusion teams. By encouraging implicitly motivated employees to pursue better architectural outcomes, heads of EA can provide them with the agency, guidance and resources to succeed, acting as a force multiplier for democratized digital delivery.
A Guide to Supporting Democratized Digital Delivery for Heads of Enterprise Architecture
Descrição 2
Minimum viable architecture is a standardized framework used to ensure the timely and compliant development and iteration of products. It refers to the set of minimal architecture deliverables needed to support business outcomes that serve as a compliance baseline against which agile delivery teams develop products. It is not fixed, and it evolves with the changing needs of the stakeholders and what they learn via iterative product development.
Challenges:
EA governance has traditionally been about “command and control,” which is why it has a bad reputation with fusion teams who perceive it as an unnecessary bureaucratic roadblock. To support distributed and architecturally significant decisions at speed, the EA practice must focus on democratizing the EA governance process, which includes reforming and rethinking traditional architectural review boards.
Explanation:
Digital capabilities are increasingly being designed and delivered by fusion teams. Democratization is increasing with decision making distributed across fusion teams. A shared architecture that allows different parts of the enterprise to collaborate is required to avoid silos and impediments. Adaptive EA governance, which uses communities of practice (CoP) and minimum viable architecture (MVA), succeeds where traditional, heavy-handed EA review boards, processes and guidance fail to support the swift decisions needed to deliver speed to value through agile and iterative methodologies (e.g., design thinking and agile).
Solution:
Align EA governance with IT and corporate governance and enterprise risk management so that EA governance shares the same common focus areas: strategy, investments, performance, resources, risk and innovation. Support fusion teams by replacing one-size-fits-all governance with adaptive governance that contextualizes decision rights, while balancing product needs with enterprise goals, risk and agility.
Repurpose traditional architectural review boards to provide guardrails — MVAs — for shared enterprise and product-level architecture decisions and shared enterprise services and digital technology foundations (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. Co-Create MVAs to Enable the Distributed Organization to Support Architecturally Significant Decisions at Speed.
Actions:
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Ensure EA governance helps the organization deliver business outcomes by focusing on orderly and coherent strategy execution vertically and horizontally.
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Ensure EA governance helps the organization find the right mix between enterprise risk and agility.
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Democratize the EA governance and architectural review board process by establishing CoPs, consisting of fusion teams, where the EA practice leads, co-creates and updates MVAs.
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Update MVAs collaboratively by working with fusion teams through the CoP and by giving representative members of fusion teams voting rights to facilitate democratic decision making.
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Ensure that the MVA eliminates technical debt; is scalable; conforms to enterprise standards, patterns and designs; and is reusable.
8 Steps to Start a High-Impact EA Practice
Descrição 3
The minimum viable architecture is a standardized package of EA viewpoints, principles, reference models, patterns and decision frameworks used by product/fusion teams to ensure the timely and compliant development, and iteration, of minimum viable products (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Construct a Baseline MVA and Continuously Update
The purpose of the MVA is to move away from traditional command-and-control EA governance and assurance to enable enterprise agility by distributing the authority to make value-based decisions. The former makes one-off, project life-cycle-based, exception decisions predicated on rigid policies, directives, rules, standards and compliance requirements. The latter makes standardized, CoP product life-cycle-based decisions, striking a balance between risk and agility, ensuring speed to value and time to market for all products under development and in production.
The CoP (EA practice and product/fusion teams) must jointly develop the baseline MVA. The MVA must be periodically updated and added to as the business and product strategy evolves/adapts and to include the use of new and emerging technologies. The MVA serves as a set of guardrails, providing freedom and responsibility for product and agile teams as they design and deliver their roadmaps. To provide meaningful guidance, an MVA must include “the why, the what and the how’’ of product architecture. It should cover the full depth of architecture decisions from a point of view on outcomes and guiding principles down to reusable code and working prototypes.
The construction of the initial or baseline MVA takes time. A cross-functional fusion team of architects, product owners, delivery team leads, developers and executives should be recruited to provide initial wireframes and drafts for the CoP to modify, vote on and adopt. The MVA must serve the best interests of the enterprise as well as individual products.
Quick Answer: How Must EA Governance and Assurance Change to Support Product Management?