In this next post on solution architecture, within the realm of governing projects, I’d like to focus specifically on the topic of project resourcing and team working. We’ll look at some best practices to have put in place that support good project governance, and collaborative delivery efforts which result in successful and high quality outputs.
When we add multiple people into a project delivery team, we have to ensure a bunch of things (which fall into us governing a project). We must ensure people are on the same page about various things like requirements to deliver, tasks to complete, how we should complete them, what standards we should follow and more! Let’s explore those things in more detail now 👀
The solution architects role
So let’s step back a second, and focus on the solution architects role, with that being the focus of this series! 😄 When it comes to working in a multiple person delivery team (as pretty much all of them should be), there needs to almost be a leader role and ownership role within the team. A lot of this is pointed towards the solution architect. The solution architect should be lots of things when working in the team such as…
- A technical escalation point
- Someone to confirm requirements
- A question answerer
- The person to have a difficult conversation with stakeholders and the customer
- The person to keep the project on track from a technical stand point
- The person to resource the project correctly from a technical stand point
Correct technical resourcing
Let’s dive into something a bit more closely that a solution architect has to ensure happens to support good team working and project governance when it comes to the delivery of an implementation project.
It’s absolutely crucial that to ensure the delivery of a project successfully, it has the correct technical resources to complete tasks and deliver on work items. Without the appropriate technical resource projects can end up going way too far over budget and estimate, and without explanation you’ll appreciate how the customer won’t be happy with this!
It’s the solution architects responsibility to align the correct resource to the correct tasks and work items to be delivered as part of the project.
Broadest knowledge point and question answerer
Solution architects should remain with an understanding that the resources in their team to carry out work item delivery, wont have all of the same knowledge as them around all sorts of things like best practice, how to run a project, and more. There will be things that make one consultant senior in a specific area, but perhaps not in another, and a different consultant in the team that has the opposite skills.
It’s the responsibility of the solution architect to have a good understanding of these different skills and to be able to point these out in the team if members have queries or need support with deliverables, or the solution architect should also act as a point of technical escalation themselves.
Work must be broken down
The next point in maintaining good project governance to support a team of delivery consultants and other roles is to have work on a project board or planner which is broken down carefully. If work is sat too high level for too larger solution it’ll become more difficult to estimate for the solution architect in the first place.
Not only that, but if work is sat too high level it will be too difficult for some delivery consultants to understand and get a real idea of what they should be doing to deliver each work item.
Break down your work items friends! 🚀
Development standards
One of the key points to being able to work in a team is having coherent standards which people in the team adopt. This allows each developer or consultant to be more familiar with the solution that has been built by other team members and makes it a lot easier to continue progressing with work items that others have previously worked on, or where others have worked similar items. Standards could be around things like…
- Schema naming conventions
- Control naming conventions
- Interface layouts
- Methods of security implementation
- Methods of automation implementation
- and more!
What’s coming up?
So friends, stay tuned as I’ll be sending out lots more posts day by day on all things solution architecture for you to follow and learn about! 💖