Here’s some food for thought based on my travels:
1-Anchor the ARB on a strategic goal - Tie the purpose to a strategic goal/outcome the entire organization is behind so the ARB isn’t process for process’s sake
2-Match the degree of governance to your culture - Ensure that the things that the ARB are governing are important and relevant in the context of your organization’s risk appetite and strategic goals
3-Communicate what good looks like - Be up front about what you expect teams to present and share all the standards and principles early and often so teams can self-serve and be educated and prepared
4-Streamline the end-to-end process - You want to automate as much as possible and make it fast and efficient for teams to provide the necessary information, for reviewers to comment/ask questions, and to ultimately get to a decision so the ARB doesn’t bottleneck delivery
5-Provide value beyond Architecture - Bring other groups and functions into the mix that teams may have to get approval from anyway as part of your organization’s product development lifecycle like Product, Legal/Risk/Compliance, Security, or Procurement to create a higher-value end-to-end process
6-Publish the decision - Be transparent about what questions and concerns were raised, what options were considered, and ultimately what decisions were made so teams can understand the rationale and be better informed for future endeavors
7-Play back the value - Play back the positive results/KPIs of your ARB in the context of achieving the strategic outcomes in point #1, preventing the accumulation of additional architecture and/or technical debt, and advancing the organization’s business and IT strategy
I hope that helps!
Excellent reply @Jason Taylor , truly appreciate.
Let me take each of your valuable input and review them carefully and identify, which ones works and are needed for my organization. Thanks again.
If I need to conduct a survey to identify gaps/improvements/opportunities and baseline , so I can identify few KPIs to work, which are those 3-5 categories of areas I should consider?
Have you done something similar or any guidance please?
Thanks again.
My pleasure @satishbyali!
If your question is more about what to ask in the survey I would suggest to start with the following (let people rate with a score 1-(strongly disagree) to 5-(strongly agree) covering the following areas:
Value/Goals
1-The ARB is delivering on our strategic goals in the organization
2-The ARB is adding value in its current state
Process and Role Clarity
3-The ARB process end-to-end is clear and published widely
4-My group’s role in the ARB is clear and value added
5-All the right roles participate in the ARB today
Efficiency/Efficacy
6-The ARB process is efficient and easy for me to participate in
7-I understand what I need to do to get a proposal approved by the ARB quickly and easily
8-The ARB process focuses on the right areas/topics to be successful
Outcomes
9-The ARB transparently publishes its decisions and outcomes for broad consumption
10-The benefits of the ARB are shared regularly in the form of tangible KPIs
Maybe each question also has a comment field so folks can share more color with their rating and then add a general comment field at the end so they can provide other feedback. This should get you a good handle on how people feel about your ARB and start to give you some data to analyze for future optimization.
@Jason Taylor Excellent… thanks again.
This is very helpful indeed… truly appreciate you time :)
