Polley's original charge
We should designate at least one person from each operating division (S&O, NCS, IS, ATSUS, Security) to serve as the chief architecture planner for that division. These people should serve together on a CIT Cross Divisional Architecture Team, to be chaired by the Director of Advanced Technology and Architecture. This team will be tasked with developing our architecture plans, standards and vetting cross-divisional IT issues. It is expected that the divisional architecture representatives will engage technical experts within their divisions as necessary to work on projects and issues.
Current Status
Week Ending |
Description |
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10/3/2008 |
Staff were very busy during August and September, so we canceled a few of our bi-weekly meetings due to insufficient attendance. We were able to meet a few times to discuss the upcoming QBR process (and the need to collect architecture inventory data), as well as plans to be involved in the architectural vetting of the proposed architecture in the Ensemble project. For the next few weeks (beginning with our 10/7 meeting) we will have Keshav Santi from Identity Management and Jim Howell from S&O visiting our meeting to give us an update on architectural plans for Ensemble. CCDAT will evaluate the proposed architecture against our own knowledge of existing architecture in our respective divisions and identify any impacts we see Ensemble having on existing systems. |
8/1/2008 |
Architecture Report presented at SRM. SRM likes the report and approved adding information about the architecture inventory to the QBR process starting with the FY09 Q1 QBR. CCDAT will need to work on refining the process by which this data is collected! |
July-August 2008 |
During these two months I have worked with the Architecture Committee to draft an "Architecture Report" from the data obtained in the Architecture Inventory exercise. The focus is on identifying (and grouping) technologies in their various stages of "support" so we can get a better picture of "where we are". The report currently focuses on four areas:
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Architecture Inventory
The official confluence page for CIT's Architecture Inventory is now availble.
Refinements
Scope:
Architecture is the high-level definition of the structure of a system, which is comprised of parts, their interrelationships, and externally visible properties. This team will focus on Enterprise Technical Architecture which is defined as the description of the current and/or future structure of an organization's:
- Hardware, platforms, and hosting: servers, and where they are kept
- Local and wide area networks, Internet connectivity diagrams
- Operating Systems
- Infrastructure software: Application servers, DBMS, etc..
Architecture should not be approached in isolation. It is intended to address important Enterprise-wide concerns, such as:
- meeting stakeholder needs
- aligning IT with the business
- seamless integration and data sharing
- security and dependability
- data integrity, consistency
- reducing duplication
Goals:
- Develop, publish maintain a model of our current Enterprise Technical Architecture
- Develop, publish and evolve a model of the desired future state
- Articulate evangelize a shared vision of the future
- Encourage architectural consistency and coherence across divisions
Organizational Impact:
- Each Director will be responsible for reviewing their division's program plans in the context of contributions to moving us towards the desired future.
- When making decisions on resource allocation SRM will place considerable weight on whether or not the project or proposal moves us towards our desired future state.
Team Makeup:
One representative from each operational division will be designated Chief Architecture Planner for that division and be the primary representative on the Cross Divisional Architecture Team (CDAT). Each representative is expected to dedicate at least 10% of their time to this effort. They will be responsible for acquiring and maintaining knowledge of the technical and product architectures used across their division. They will also be responsible for informing CDAT about any projects or decisions that effect the enterprise technical architecture. A division may contribute additional resources to CDAT, however, there will be a single Chief Architecture Planner for each division. The division Chief Architecture Planner is expected tap other members of their division when specialized knowledge is required.
The CCDAT Architecture Team consists of:
- ATA - Ron DiNapoli (chair)
- ATSUS - Todd Maniscalco
- IS - Steve Barrett
- NCS - Eric Cronise
- OIT - Mark Mara, Jim Haustein
- Security & IdM - Steve Edgar
- S&O - Laurie Collinsworth
Suggested Approach:
Start with a product, such as BlackBoard, and trace the architectural dependencies.