Role Guidelines Contents Relationship to Architecture Governance
Architecture Contracts are the joint agreements between development partners and sponsors on the deliverables, quality, and fitness for purpose of an Architecture. Successful implementation of these agreements will delivered through effective Architecture Governance. By implementing a governed approach to the management of contracts, the following will be ensured:
The traditional Architecture contract is an agreement between the sponsor and the Architecture function or Information Systems department. However, increasingly more services are being provided by Systems Integrators, Applications Providers, and Service Providers, co-ordinated through the Architecture function or Information Systems department. There is therefore a need for an Architecture Contract to establish joint agreements between all parties involved in the Architecture development and delivery.
"Architecture Contracts" may occur at various stages of the ADM; for example:
It is important to bear in mind in all these cases that the ultimate goal is not just an enterprise architecture, but a dynamic enterprise architecture - i.e., one that allows for flexible evolution in response to changing technology and business drivers, without unnecessary constraints. The Architecture Contract is crucial to enabling a dynamic enterprise architecture.
Typical contents of these three kinds of Architecture Contract are explained below.
The Statement of Work is created as a deliverable of Phase A, and is effectively an architecture contract between the architecting organization and the sponsor of the Enterprise Architecture (or the IT Governance function, on behalf of the enterprise).
Typical contents of a Statement of Architecture Work are:
Statement of work title
Project request and background
Project description and scope
Architecture vision
Managerial approach
Change of scope procedures
Responsibilities and deliverables
Acceptance criteria and procedures
Project plan and schedule
Support of the Enterprise Continuum
Signature approvals
This is a signed statement of intent on designing and developing the enterprise architecture, or significant parts of it, from partner organizations, including Systems Integrators, Applications Providers, and Service Providers.
Increasingly the development of one or more architecture domains (Business, Data, Applications, or Technology Architecture) may be contracted out, with the enterprise's Architecture function providing oversight of the overall Enterprise Architecture, and co-ordination and control of the overall effort. In some cases even this oversight role may be contracted out, although most enterprises prefer to retain that core responsibility in-house.
Whatever the specifics of the contracting-out arrangements, the arrangements themselves will normally be governed by an Architecture Contract that defines the deliverables, quality, and fitness for purpose of the developed Architecture, and the processes by which the partners in the architecture development will work together.
Typical contents of an Architecture Design and Development Contract are:
Introduction & Background
The nature of the agreement
Scope of the Architecture
Architecture and Strategic principles and requirements
Conformance requirements
Architecture development and management process and roles
Target architecture measures
Defined Phases of deliverables
Prioritised Joint Workplan
Time window(s)
Architecture delivery and business metrics
The template for this contract will normally be defined as part of the Preliminary Phase of the ADM, if not existing already, and the specific contract will be defined at the appropriate stage of the ADM, depending on the particular work that is being contracted out.
This is a signed statement of intent to conform with the Enterprise Architecture, issued by enterprise business users. When the Enterprise Architecture has been implemented (at the end of Phase G, Implementation Governance), an Architecture Contract will normally be drawn up between the Architecting function (or the IT Governance function, subsuming the Architecting function) and the business users who will subsequently be building and deploying application systems in the architected environment.
Typical contents of a Business Users' Architecture Contract are:
Introduction & Background
The nature of the agreement
Scope
Strategic requirements
Architecture deliverables that meet the business requirements
Conformance requirements
Architecture adopters
Time window
Architecture business metrics
Service Architecture (includes Service Level Agreement)
This contract is also used to manage changes to the Enterprise Architecture in Phase H, Architecture Change Management.
The Architecture Contract document produced in the Implementation Governance Phase of the ADM figures prominently in the area of Architecture Governance, as explained elsewhere in Part IV.
In the context of Architecture Governance, the Architecture Contract is often used as a means of driving architecture change.
In order to ensure that the Architecture Contract is effective and efficient, the following aspects of the governance framework may need to be introduced into the Implementation Governance phase:
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