Architecture Options & Recommendations is one of the services that Microsoft architects conduct with businesses as part of the Microsoft Value Realization Framework. It’s one of the Value Realization services that we mentioned in our earlier post,Welcome to the Value Realization Blog.

Here we evaluate the architecture (in its broadest sense) across multiple perspectives – technical, business, social, commercial, and validate the proposed technology architecture(s) against the business imperatives, business architecture, business outcomes, and expected business value. All to enable various stakeholders to have their concerns about the proposed solutions evaluated and addressed. 

The key here is that architectural choices are based on tested and proven practices recommended by Microsoft , as well as our value-driven approach.

When a business explores initiatives for modernizing, becoming more agile, or improving IT services, many tradeoffs become apparent: stakeholders must feasibly balance cost, value, future capability, security, business benefits, and technical demands.

Leaders throughout a business carefully examine their options and constraints, and ask questions such as:

• How do I show business value in the short term that accrue over the long term?
• Can changes be implemented in manageable increments?
• Can we rationalize the initial investment?
• How should we prioritize the requirements and create strong connections to business objectives?
• What can we do to limit risk during implementation?
• How can we prepare for future innovation while meeting our current requirements?

An architect can help a business consider these questions and factors, and choose appropriate solutions and approaches for implementing them.

Microsoft Enterprise Architects provide a service called Architecture Options & Recommendations, which helps businesses explore their options, identify important tradeoffs, resulting in confident choices.

Overview of the Architecture Options & Recommendations Service

When we perform the Architecture Options & Recommendations service, we create a roadmap for the architecture is grounded in the business case and reduces the complexity for a given initiative.

We evaluate each architecture option against business objectives, business value, architecture principles, IT standards, commercial factors, constraints, and other aspects critical to the business.

Objectives

Our objectives when identifying and evaluating architecture options include the following:

• We ensure that the architectures we recommend follow proven patterns and practices.
• We use architectural principles and choices endorsed by the Office of the CTO.
• We identify architectural choices that maximize business benefits and support the future capability vision for the business.
• We identify architectural choices that align with other current and planned initiatives at the enterprise in which we are engaged.
• We identify feasible, viable choices that align with the ability of a business to carry out the initiative.

Activities

When performing the Architecture Options & Recommendations Service, a Microsoft architect and colleagues work with many members of the business. Participants include business executives, stakeholders, financial experts, and architectural review boards.

Architects learn about and take into account customer-specific options and constraints while identifying solutions and approaches. Throughout the process, we document rationale and choices with relevant details.

• We develop and present architecture alternatives and recommendations.
• We highlight advantages, disadvantages, differences, gaps, and key risks of architecture alternatives.
• We compare alternatives based on business criteria and directly link them to value measures.
• We include a high-level view of economic trade-offs and opportunity costs.
• We review and confirm the proposed architecture recommendations with key stakeholders.

Outcomes

The Architecture Options & Recommendations Service provides documented and substantiated information about architectural tradeoffs and decisions. The service highlights proven and recommended solutions to enable an enterprise to make appropriate architectural choices. By using this nimble yet rigorous approach is key to creating and governing the architecture overtime.

What’s the Value of Doing This?

Microsoft architects use well-known approaches to help businesses evaluate architecture options. We introduce additional value through many avenues:

• We provide results obtained from a multi-dimensional and value-driven approach, connecting IT back to the business.
• We focus on balancing IT and business requirements, and producing technically sound results.
• We provide proven and predictable architectures, minimizing risks, standardizing, and making the most of existing investments.
• We develop architecture that helps ensure that businesses receive expected benefits.
• We highlight solutions that support future capability vision for the enterprise.
• We help businesses speed up the implementation of their initiatives.
• We have access to unique technical knowledge and deep platform knowledge.
• In our global services, we have acquired business expertise, economic perspectives, commercial awareness, and knowledge of regulatory requirements.
• We provide accurate views of costs, risks, and ranges of value.
• We provide recommendations for mitigating risk.

How do We Achieve Value?

To perform the service, a Microsoft architect uses information obtained from an enterprise, and expertise and proven practices from Microsoft. We generally follow these steps:

1. We establish an Architecture Statement of Work to ensure that the approach and deliverables conform to the governance practices for a business.
2. We define and prioritize requirements, carefully describing the problems, opportunities, and desired outcomes for key stakeholders.
3. We identify architecture options, including a comprehensive list of alternatives, and select viable alternatives based on the defined architecture principles, standards and constraints for the business.
4. We evaluate architecture alternatives based on business, IT and user needs/wants.
5. We document architecture decisions based on architecture principles, standards, constraints, requirements and trade-offs.
6. We define recommended architectures.

Example

The Architecture Review Board of Contoso Bank became concerned about the growing complexity of the bank’s information architecture and line-of-business applications. Mergers during the last several years had increased the client base and portfolio of offerings for the bank.

As a result, the IT environment had become very complex and difficult to maintain. The Director of Group Technology expressed the impact of the complexity and how it adversely affected agility and time-to-market. We noted also that the technology team’s relationships were eroding with their business partners, such as Retail and Corporate.

The Architecture Review Board decided to evaluate architectural options that would help simplify and optimize the IT environment. Microsoft helped the enterprise architecture team, business representatives, and operations staff to review viable options that would reduce complexity.

Using an approach that was part consultative, and part collaborative, the Microsoft architect worked with the following stakeholders and participants:

• Business Operations: Business sponsors and customer advocates
• Group IT: Enterprise architects, solution designers, IT operations, information security, end user services, and enterprise networks team.
• Process Engineering: To address, for example, changes to call center operations
• Program Management: To drive the project
• IT and Business Liaison: As a conduit between business and IT stakeholders
• Risk and Governance Team: To address compliance and regulatory aspects
• Network Partner: Service provider running networks

The bank considered several options for producing a simpler architecture:

• The bank could continue to integrate systems and let them co-exist in the short term, while preparing for a phased migration to a single enterprise-wide solution.
• Mitigate risks by taking steps in areas that were not critical to operations or revenue, and then gradually roll out other changes across the organization. This enables the bank to gain experience while continuously improving the environment.
• Invest in iterative “mini-architectures,” rather than a traditional “big bang” approach.
• Focus on value by undertaking the initiatives related to the most impactful business and IT scenarios.

The Microsoft architect helped the Architecture Review Board and other participants to identify the valuable and feasible initiatives. The CIO, having a better understanding of the complexity of the bank’s needs, began pursuing and promoting ideas for configuring ready-made solutions, rather than building new solutions from scratch.