How to create an effective architecture team

by John Patchett

June 24th, 2014

Deliver business capabilities or suffer irrelevance

Top companies are investing in Enterprise Architecture practices. Not surprisingly, Enterprise Architecture groups are failing at staggering rates. Born from the need to apply architecture principles across organizational divisions and enable business capabilities, Enterprise Architecture is simultaneously game changing and completely irrelevant.

To tease apart this conundrum of importance and irrelevance, you need to examine both the practice and the people. 

The typical architecture practice – Mostly harmless

A CIO I worked with a few years back once referred to their Enterprise Architects as “mostly harmless."

Your architecture practice does stuff. In my experience, that ‘stuff’ most architecture teams do consists of attending meetings, providing opinions and dispensing technical knowledge. Occasionally there might be a diagram, or a few decision record documents. In some rare instances I have seen a technology roadmap or a set of standards and principles (which are largely ignored).

The architects will usually arrange themselves into areas of interest: Solution, Technical, Information and Enterprise. They will meet to in groups too, usually weekly, as a VAT (virtual architecture team) or an ARB (architecture review board) to review project progress, or complain about the lack of engagement by project teams. These teams practice architecture, without knowing why they are practicing architecture. They are going through the motions, however they are not connected to the value of architecture.

The value-driven architecture practice

There are a few companies which have exceptional architecture practices and are getting a return on their investment from the practice. Let’s look closer and see what these practices are doing different.

 Value metrics: 
When practicing architecture there must be an awareness of value, and value metrics for measuring how much benefit an organization receives. Highly-effective architecture groups have learned to express their value equation in understandable terms and communicate this value to the entire organization. This curtails the barbed question, “What is the value of architecture anyway?”  Next, these architecture groups measure their value in quantifiable dollars and track this value over time as a team scorecard. This approach builds transparency and trust as a valued contributor to the bottom line.

 Relevance: 
Highly-effective architecture practices work within the framework of IT, while working alongside business units to achieve business outcomes. Business units are engaged in trench warfare against competitors, cost and internal inefficiency while trying to maximize customer experience and margin. They don’t have time to stop business and work out new business processes, or the application of technology to create competitive advantage. That’s the job of Enterprise Architecture – to think like the business units, solve relevant business issues and provide guidance for emergent business opportunities.

Actionable:
Another CIO I worked with often said, “If it is not written down, or not possible to execute, then it might as well not exist.” This brings me to the next quality of a highly effective architecture practice – Actionable.  When forwarding recommendations, providing strategic guidance or suggesting a solution for a business capability, these dream teams understand the organization’s capability to absorb change and risk. This understanding allows for actionable outcomes – the organization has the capability to implement and absorb.

Attributes of an effective architecture team member

It stands to reason that the majority of people in architecture roles started off their careers as programmers, business analysts or technologists. Effective architects employ more skills than technology mastery. Look across the five basic dimensions of architecture acumen: Architecture Work, Technical Mastery, Engagement Skills, Business Understanding and Strategic Thinking. Your team is likely weighted to Technical Mastery and somewhat to Architecture Work, because your architects were promoted to architecture as a method of recognition and retention for their area of specialization.

To effectively influence an enterprise, the personalities in your architecture team must possess the qualities that can understand business and to influence, without authority. An effective architect extends influence, and reframes demand in terms of business capabilities to collaborate successfully and execute projects consistently.

The top 6 failures of an architecture group:

Ignore governance – Your architects have produced valuable guidelines and patterns that, if followed will save the company money. But nobody in IT follows the architecture roadmap. You need a governance and exception management process. You are waiting/wanting a perfect process (with a big stick). Don’t be a police force, and don’t do nothing, seek the middle ground and govern what you have.

Living in an isolated silo – Communication is the life blood of any team, particularly true for architecture practices. Practitioners need to be the bridge between business strategy and IT solutions and operations. If the architecture group is inwardly focused, they are not thinking about the enterprise.

No executive support for the team – Architecture teams don’t need authority to be effective, but they do need someone who can shoulder some of the executive level influence required. Speak softly, and have an eight hundred pound gorilla in your corner.

Ivory tower academia – Your company is a business, with a tangible product/service, and are measured with real financial metrics. Architecture is not theory or an intellectual exercise, architecture has to be relevant and actionable within a business context. A technically elegant solution that cannot be implemented in practice … has no value.

Fight every battle like the zombie apocalypse – Architecture is a partnership, you cannot fight for the ‘perfect answer’; learn to compromise. An architecture group that rams ideas onto the “plebian hoards of the organization” has lost its way.

Ignore the business units – Without a doubt this is the fastest and more effective path to irrelevance. Disconnect from the company’s reason for existing (the business units and profit generators), and watch your team cease to exist.

Call to Action: What can you do?

• Evaluate your team; do they have the right stuff?  Can they effectively engage the company’s business units?
• Book a meeting with your business units, talk to them about business capabilities.
• Have your team repeat these words every morning: Relevant, actionable, value.
• Govern the architecture processes you have now. Keep it simple.

Tags: value, architecture, business, teamwork, data governance, strategy, process, IT, CIO, architect, business unit