Manage Technical Architecture Activities

Form the architecture project, manage its tasks, and provide life-cycle oversight of the Technical Architecture's usage.

Introduction Activities Roles and Responsibilities Artifacts Additional Resources

- HS IT Strategic Plan - Strategic Analysis and Data - Technical Architecture Work Plans and Direction - Change Requests (A-TARS) - Waiver or Design Requests - A-TARS - Status Establish Technical Architecture Team Plan and Track Architecture Tasks Coordinate Technical Architecture Usage - Technical Architecture Work Plans and Direction - Performance Measures - Waivers or Design Approvals -Technical Architecture Team - Other Key Stakeholders

Introduction

The HS Agency's Technical Architecture development and oversight activities are managed as an ongoing project within the HS IT Division. The architecture project is staffed with a Core Team of experienced technologists, has its own dedicated resources, and its activities are formally managed. The Chief Architect acts as the leader-manager for the team, supported by a facilitator and others to ensure proper planning, coordination, and monitoring of architecture-related tasks.

In addition to the management of the A-TARS development and maintenance actions, its use must be coordinated across the HS Agency. The architects serve as reviewers and advisors to the IT projects. They coordinate with others when there is a change in strategy or requests for exceptions to the Technical Architecture, and when oversight of a project's design-related decisions is necessary.

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Activities

Consolidated guidelines are available to perform the following key activities:

1. Establish Technical Architecture Team. To establish the Architecture Team, the IT Division Manager assembles and empowers individuals that will be responsible for guiding all Agency-wide, technology-related decisions. This includes:
   • Establishing a core technical and management team. Responsibility and design authorities are delegated to the Chief Architect, and a Core Team of 3 to 5 senior technical individuals is established. Adequate resources should be provided, initially to help form the team and do the necessary planning, and later to execute the Technical Architecture Work Plans.
   • Establishing the mechanisms to temporarily extend the Core Team. This includes adding expertise to the team when needed. Individuals are provided appropriate team orientation as they assist in performing studies, consulting, or preparing portions of the A-TARS.
   • Establishing technical working groups to interface with other technology-related groups within and outside the HS Agency. This may include a Technical Architecture Change Control Board or interface control working groups.
   
   
2. Plan and Track Technical Architecture Tasks. These are traditional planning and management activities applied to the Technical Architecture activities. The actions to be performed include:
   • Establishing formal plans that describe the products of the Architecture Team, the timetable for release, and the resources required. These plans help coordinate the Technical Architecture activities with those of the IT projects. The team works with the IT program planners and the HS programs to determine the plateaus and how the Technical Architecture will evolve over time.
   • Tracking progress against the documented plans and making adjustments, as needed. This may require rescheduling activities or changing activity performance, such as augmenting the team with additional expertise or tools. These plans are the basis of communicating progress to the HS Agency leadership, HS programs, and the IT projects. All commitments between the Architecture Team and others are recorded and coordinated using these plans, such as levels of support for the IT projects.
   
   
3. Coordinate Technical Architecture Usage. The core Architecture Team has responsibility to ensure that the descriptions in the A-TARS are appropriately implemented. This technical oversight responsibility involves:
   • Acting as advisors to the projects and actively participating in the project technology design and implementation decisions. The A-TARS descriptions are not prescriptive and require interpretation, which the architects must provide (see the background on use of the descriptions).
   • Attending design reviews to provide technical oversight to IT project designs and technical practices.
   • Reviewing and approving IT project requests for waivers from A-TARS descriptions. The specific needs and short-term objectives and constraints imposed on the IT projects are traded off against the longer-term needs of the HS Agency to allow for effective use of the A-TARS.

   • Managing change requests through a formal change submission, review and control process, such as an Architecture Change Control Board.

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Roles and Responsibilities

The key roles and their responsibilities are as follows:

• Technical Architecture Team. The Chief Architect and senior technical staff are the primary individuals responsible for these activities. The Chief Architect acts as the overall management and technical authority for the team, while a Facilitator assists as the team administrator. The team membership consists of a relatively stable Core Team and a highly dynamic Extended Team.
• Other Key Stakeholders. These individuals or groups participate or have a vested interest in the establishment, approval, or oversight of the Technical Architecture activities. This may include IT Division Management, the IT project management, and the IT Decision Makers, among others. Stakeholders also include those technical or management staff that use the architecture products, file waivers, change requests, or otherwise interact with the Technical Architecture Team.

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Artifacts

The following information is used or produced by these activities. Templates, examples, and checklists for identifying and documenting items are available through the Additional Resources section at the end of this page.

• HS IT Strategic Plan. This is the foundation for the detailed Technical Architecture work plans. All actions in the work plans must be consistent with the higher-levels goals, principles, and initiatives of the Strategic Plan.
• Strategic Analysis and Data. This information augments the HS IT Strategic Plan by providing further insight into the strategic direction. This includes an understanding of the current state of the IT within the HS Agency, such as the inventory and its analysis described by the Analyze the Situation activities.
• Technical Architecture Work Plans and Direction. These plans are the main product of these activities, updating the previous version, if it exists. They are used to guide the execution of all architecture-related activities. These plans are the means for coordinating the Technical Architecture Team members with one another, the IT projects, and other external groups. These plans are the basis of measuring actual progress against the plans and are updated as needed.
• Change Requests. Individuals file requests to modify descriptions in the A-TARS. These requests are evaluated and used to establish tasks to maintain the A-TARS.
• Waivers or Design Approvals. IT projects file waivers to be relieved from binding A-TARS requirements. The projects also must receive formal approval where design decisions must be coordinated between the project and the Technical Architecture Team.
• Performance Measures. Measures are periodically reported to HS Agency executive management. These measures address Technical Architecture tasks and performance against appropriate measures of the IT Strategic Plan.
• Status. Progress and issues in developing the descriptions are collected from the other Technical Architecture activities and used to update the actual achievements against the work plans.

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Additional Resources

Items that can be used to perform these and other activities are consolidated in the Resources portion of the IT Planning and Management Guides. Resources specific to this activity are cataloged below.