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Day in the life of a lead enterprise architect

Find out what it’s like to work as a lead enterprise architect in the Australian Public Service. 

Paul shares a day in the life of a lead enterprise architect. 

A varied background and skillset

I didn’t get straight into architecture. I started as an application developer and then got into solution design work in technology, programming and infrastructure. After 15 years I went into contract and project management and after another 5 years came back to being a solution architect. I then progressed into enterprise architecture.  

A conceptual world

When you talk about solution design, you are looking at things at a physical level. With solution architecture, you’re looking at things at a logical level. When you get to enterprise architecture, it’s a more conceptual world. So, as an example, conceptually, we would be talking about an Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) system. In contrast, at a logical level we would talk about SAP HR, SAP ECC and SAP ERP. And at the design level, you’re talking about technologies like NetWeaver programming. You are going from a very detailed physical world up to a conceptual one, which involves modelling and being able to express ideas and talk to other people.  

A high-level view of systems

As lead enterprise architect, I have a good, high-level view of all the technology and business applications needed for my agency. To capture this architecture, we have a framework called the business capability model, which describes the business capabilities needed to support the organisation. We have business applications for each business capability, and for each business application, we have our current technologies and the technologies we want to use (our target).  

For example, take our human resource system, which is a business capability. For this capability, we currently use service provided by the lead department. But the whole of government requirement is that we move to Gov enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. That means that Gov ERP is our target. 

Getting from A to B

To move from our current technology to our target, we need to design a roadmap and this is where the lead enterprise architect plays a critical role. To create the road map, we have an architectural guidance framework that helps define the target and what functionality it will need to support. In the example of changing technologies, the lead enterprise architect ensures that the legal and IT security teams have input and are across the detail. They also ensure that the technology is supported internally. Essentially, we make sure that all the subject matter experts impacted by the change understand the change and agree with the change. That’s what the governance process enables. 

Shaping solutions for a modern workplace

In our agency, we administer intellectual property for patent, trademark, design and plant breeder rights. We had an old transactional online portal system from the early 2000's that we wanted to upgrade. I was part of a team at the enterprise level, saying this is what we want this thing to look like and the outcome we want. 

As part of our research, our team looked around the world to see what others were doing. What does Amazon do? What does Google do? We discovered that they all use APIs and micro services. This research informed our strategic decision-making about changing our transactional portal, and we decided to upgrade our technology by building the portal in AWS (Amazon Web Services). The solution architects were then able to design the solution. The project was successful, and our stakeholders love the result. 
 

All views expressed are personal views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the view of the department or agency

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