Case Study

Architecture Practice Uplift

An organisation was struggling to adopt the Cloud and squads were forging their own paths that resulted in duplication of functionality across applications, different technologies used to solve the same problems and limited patterns being followed. The organisation had a few lead engineers creating designs for some solutions.

Opportunity

There was an opportunity to establish an architecture practice and implement appropriate standards, controls and patterns across IT. While also establishing a design authority to centralise IT decision making. This included introducing industry reference models and creating materials that aligned with business needs for executive decision making, and architectures to guide platform engineering and squads. This would help reduce rework, reduce waste, reduce risk and drive sustainable and more predictable performance.

Hypotheses

Is it possible to establish an architecture practice in a highly regulated organisation, within 3 months?
Is it possible to establish standards and controls within IT to govern all technology decisions, proof of concepts, and supplier engagements?
Is it possible to adopt tooling to centralise architecture and design models, including IT landscape reporting, that is derived by a centralised IT inventory?
Is it possible to refocus architecture effort on creating reusable patterns for platform engineering and software engineering, when the team does not have enough capacity to manage demand for solution designs?

The solution

Understand the current state by running a series of discovery sessions and interviews. Bring together staff involved in creating types of architectures, design an architecture method and a set of KPIs. Design new repositories for architecture content and improve demand and task management. Construct material to guide architecture and improve modeling IT solutions. Support the team in creating architectures that guide evolving critical systems across the enterprise and designs for engineering teams.

Major Pain Points

Various architecture roles but no adequate position descriptions.
Limited understanding of how architecture fits in with software engineering & project delivery.
Inconsistent architecture diagrams.
No up-to-date views of the IT landscape.
No common, centralised architecture repository.
Technology choices were siloed and bespoke.
No ability to coordinate change due to many differences of opinions.
No future state architectures and no adoption of industry reference models.
High technical debt, most app were on-prem and the Cloud was still emerging.

Outcome

This resulted in a functioning architecture practice that focused on creating patterns for engineering teams. Including bring teams together to run proof of concepts and build prototypes to collaborate on technology choices and architecture & design patterns. Architecture governance was uplifted through establishing a design authority that resulted in improved visibility over technology decisions and proof of concepts. Efficiencies and consistencies were improved, leading to increased capacity across the practice and demand from individual stakeholders would be connected with architecture tasks. Alignment with enterprise change initiatives improved and decision making was supported by accurate information.

Technological Change Consultancy

CONSULTING FROM REAL EXPERIENCES

Case Study

Architecture Practice Uplift

Opportunity