15 Architecture modernization enabling teams

 

This chapter covers

  • Identifying the need for an architecture modernization enabling team (AMET)
  • Winding down an AMET when the mission has been achieved
  • Staffing an AMET with suitable team members
  • Establishing an enduring architecture operating model

If the most challenging part of modernization is getting started, then the second most challenging part is sustaining the momentum. Modernization is technology change, organizational change, and cultural change. You are swimming upstream against how things have always been done, and if you don’t maintain high levels of commitment, your modernization will get washed away, and things will be back to the way they were before.

An architecture modernization enabling team (AMET) is one solution for countering the forces of inertia. An AMET’s mission is to ensure modernization keeps progressing via various means, from organizing workshops to coaching leaders and teams to keeping modernization high on the agenda when other priorities, like BAU work and bug fixes, compete for people’s limited time.

15.1 AMET primary purposes

15.1.1 Kickstarting modernization

15.1.2 Sustaining modernization momentum

15.1.3 Facilitating better design

15.1.4 Facilitating long-lasting, durable change

15.1.5 Communicating the vision and progress

15.1.6 Promoting success stories and learnings

15.2 Industry example: Enabling modernization at a European telco

15.3 Winding down an AMET

15.3.1 Evolving investment and involvement

15.3.2 Establishing an architecture operating model