Architecture Assessment
Application Architecture is an important part of an organization's ability to run low risk and highly efficient IT Operations. Architectural choices have a direct impact on the stability, deployability, and scalability of your application services, yet these non-functional requirements are often overlooked or underrepresented in the application development process.
Our architecture assessment services are designed to help your organization identify and analyze the architectural choices that have an impact on IT Operations. We work with your development team and your operations team to ensure that your application lifecycle is producing stable, deployable, and scalable applications.
The scope of each our architecture assessment projects is customized to an organizations specific needs and dynamics. Architecture assessment projects can be broad or narrow in scope, depending on the business requirements driving the project.
All of our assessment projects are customized to address the specific business and technical requirements unique to each organization. Similar to the process for an application lifecycle assessment, we follow a general methodology that has been developed through our work for a wide variety of IT organizations. Below you'll find an overview of that general process.
Phase 1: Assessment Scoping
An important part of the assessment process is aligning business and technology goals. During this initial phase we'll work with both business and technology managers to ensure that the correct scope and expectations have been set.
This phase generally includes gaining an initial understanding of the client's current business needs and initiatives, current technology initiatives, known limitations/constraints, and organizational dynamics/structure. Well also work with the client to identify assessment participants and which applications we will analyze.
Phase 2: Analyze Existing Architecture and Practices
Through a process of interviews, working groups, discovery, and review of existing documentation we will produce a current architecture model for the applications in question. This model takes a holistic view of how your applications, platforms, data, and operational procedures come together to provide functioning business services. This is an iterative process to ensure that the model accurately reflects the current state of affairs.
The architecture model is then analyzed in order to identify problems, risks, missed opportunities. The primary goal is to identify issues that have a negative impact on the reliability and efficiency of daily IT operations and service delivery capabilities. However, at the request of the client we can examine any number of technical or business issues.
Phase 3: Results Workshops
In this phase we conduct a series of results workshops with the key stakeholders and sponsoring managers. These workshops are an iterative process designed to create consensus around the gaps, risks, and costly inefficiencies uncovered by the assessment process.
A critical part of the results workshops are aligning the issues identified with both solution candidates and their corresponding business needs and justifications. Timing and appetite for change are often critical factors. In some situations, significant and immediate change will be the correct answer. In other situations, avoiding current "hotspots" and undergoing gradual change over time is the correct answer.
For more information on how DTO Solutions can help your organization, contact us.
