Architecture review boards are out of step
To this day, I shiver when I hear leaders speak about their architecture review boards and the process of presenting to them. To be clear, I believe these boards are important, but their missions, processes, and tools must be modernized for today’s faster and more agile development processes. ARBs and enterprise architects also have many opportunities to uplift digital transformation by weighing in on implantation tradeoffs and establishing which non-functional requirements are essential for specific initiatives.
“The role of an architecture review board once was much more autocratic, led by a small group that made decisions for the larger organization under a ‘one-size-fits-all’ philosophy,” says Dalan Winbush, CIO of Quickbase. The democratization of software, particularly through low-code/no-code, agile, and AI technologies, is changing the ARB’s role, said Winbush. Architecture review boards are expected to be more collaborative and responsive, and the ARB’s role is “more expansive in considering governance, security, compliance, data management, connectivity, and collaboration, all in service of larger business goals,” he said. “The ARB’s responsibilities include ensuring the integrity of the application development process, data, and the overall IT infrastructure.”
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) version 9.2, published in 2018, describes the role of cross-organization architecture board as overseeing the implementation of strategy. It identifies over 20 responsibilities such as establishing targets for component reuse, providing advice, and resolving conflicts. However, some of the responsibilities listed may cause devops leaders to cringe, such as “providing the basis for all decision-making with regard to the architectures.”