SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE GROUP

· Create a Solution Architecture Group comprising experienced full-time solution architects - on large projects with tight timescales it may be essential that more than one solution architect form are the core of the team. One can focus on the technical storyboard and another in defining the data architecture

· In the early design stages conduct workshops to define the technical storyboard and data architecure. These provide the basis and framework for all package and middleware detailed designs. The technical storyboard defines how the end to end solution works for each high level business process and for each client product to be supported. E.g. a storyboard would comprise a series of steps which when followed would show how each package is used to support the ‘New Order’ process for the client product - Frame Relay VPN. The Data Architecture defines which package is the master source of each category of data (e.g. Siebel owns the customer data)

· The workshops should involve design architects (package experts) from each package team and an integration architect from the middleware team. It is their responsibility to contribute to the design and communicate the design back to their teams for detailed design and implementation