Architects

@ SAP-Emarsys

History vs Current plans

History vs Current plans

“An architect’s role is to lead by example, build people, innovate, educate, guide and influence...it is not to use authority to tell others what to do.”
 

What Does an Architect Do?

Organization Education, Culture and Growth

  • Helps the teams to make everyday architecture decisions

  • Helps Team/Tech leads identify talents

  • Helps Team members by mentoring them
    (on hard skill/professional level)

  • Directly contributes to the Company's values, principles, and patterns

Innovation & Strategy

  • Challenge teams' plans, architectural or process-wise decisions

  • Own Team/Area's North Star/Long-range technical plans

  • Help Teams plan according to these plans

  • Reassess these plans according to technical challenges, new knowledge or business needs

  • Contributes to the Company's North Star

Continuous Improvement
(Gemba Kaizen)

  • Identifies areas of weakness

  • Gemba Walk / Go See

  • Contributes to Post-mortems

  • Surface decisions/opportunities which can affect others

  • Contributes to Values, Principles & Practices

How and where?

VATs

  • Central Virtual Architecture Team

    • Responsible for cross-cutting issues

    • Make faster decision on global problems

    • Influence roadmap

  • Area Virtual Architecture Team

    • Responsible for Area/Team level architecture and development practices, ensure good decisions

    • Areas must have at least 1 Architect

  • Project Virtual Architecture Team

    • Same as Area but for a specific project

Forums

  • Central Architectural Forum

    • Discuss, review cross-cutting issues

    • Weekly meeting

    • Architects must be there (for transparency), opened to others

    • Replaces ADB with reviewing (but not approving!) cross-cutting architectural changes

Forums

  • Area Architectural Forum

    • Up to the Area, Tech Leads + Architects

    • They must ensure good decisions & practices

    • They must have meeting(s) where they present architectural changes

    • One person from CVAT must be there (for transparency, not governance!)

  • Project Architectural Forum

    • Like the Area one but for specific project