Background

While there are certain general principles of enterprise architecture that are universally applicable, each IT organization should define its own, customized enterprise architecture.  

Goals of this Service

An architecture review usually starts with a visit by the consultant to the customer site.  During this visit the customer briefs the consultant on the customer's overall business and technical strategies.  Senior architects, IT managers, and developers then present the current state of the customer's enterprise architecture to the consultant.

The next step depends on the state of the customer's architecture process.  In some cases, the customer has concrete architecture artifacts for the consultant to review, such as narrative documents and models.  In some cases the customer is in the initial stages of developing an architecture and has few such artifacts.

If there are artifacts to review, the consultant studies them off-site and writes feedback.  Written feedback consists of comments inserted in documents and models, along with an overall feedback summary.  The consultant emails the feedback to the appropriate customer personnel, who then study the feedback.  The consultant then conducts a feedback review session with these personnel, either on-site or via teleconference.  During a feedback review session the consultant walks through the feedback points, and entertains questions that drive discussion and the identification of action items for the customer.

If there are no artifacts for the consultant to review, the consultant provides feedback verbally during the initial briefings, writes a feedback summary off-site, and emails it to appropirate customer personnel.  After the customer personnel have read the feedback, the consultant conducts a feedback review session.

Architecture review is an iterative process.  Thus, after the customer has revised the architecture based on the consultant's feedback, a new round of architectural review can begin, if the customer desires it.