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Architecture Board

Mandate​

Prenda’s Architecture Board shall be assembled to manage the technical and data architecture of Prenda’s systems to enable the success and ensure the sustainability of Prenda’s strategic business objectives.

Composition​

The Board is composed of the Head of Technology, Engineering Team Leads, and at least one Engineer (with a preference for one engineer from each execution team), and shall extend to include other subject matter experts (e.g. Data Science, Tech Ops) according to the domain of the project being reviewed.

Tasked with managing Prenda’s system and data architecture and assuring long-term health and sustainability, Board members must assess proposed technical projects in the context of their impact on system and data architecture.

Functions and Processes​

The Board holds ad-hoc meetings to review newly submitted Architecture Impact Briefs (AIB) in a timely manner and to review the progress of ongoing architecture impacting execution team projects.

The Architecture Review Process includes assessment of:

  • Written Architecture Impact Brief
  • Alignment with company strategic objectives
  • Effect on technical debt
  • Industry accepted engineering best practices

Presentation to Architecture Board​

When a project prioritized by the Product Steering Committee for execution is identified to have system or data architectural modifying components, an Architecture Impact Brief (AIB) must be prepared and submitted for review by the Architecture Board.

The project’s lead engineer, in collaboration with their execution team and Product Manager, is responsible for determining if the threshold for AIB submission is met. Some criteria for making this determination are:

  • Substantial mutations to data and/or data structure
  • Changes to direction or nature of data flows
  • Application architecture changes
  • Changes that affect a larger domain
  • Substantial refactors that involve a large portion of the codebase
  • Changes to an unversioned API endpoint

Architecture Impact Briefs must include a project outline and summary, in addition to a detailed inter- and intra-system impact analysis, calling out pertinent integrations, and detailing any new or modified data standards or conventions.

AIBs will be reviewed by the Board, including subject matter experts as appropriate for context, and a meeting will be scheduled for presentation of the AIB by its author with any key individuals and supporting material as appropriate.

The Board may suggest modifications to the AIBs where appropriate or ask for resubmission for a new review. Reasonable alignment with the above listed criteria as determined by unanimous decision of all Board members in attendance is required for project execution to move forward.