Architecture as an Enabling Team


⚠️ Are you facing challenges around:

  • very controlling and slow architecture activities?
  • teams are always waiting on Architects (and other people) to design and decide?
  • learning happens slowly - and there are many silos and inefficiencies in the organizations (e.g., multiple teams trying to solve the exact same problems)?
  • there are many surprises happening all the time and responses are slow and sub-par?

🟠 If these questions resonate with you, your organization's approach to architecture is most likely very controlling and limiting your teams ability to respond to the many challenges and opportunities in your environment.

🟒 This is where I can help you with "Enabling Architecture & Thinking" workshops and sessions. These are designed to help you understand and evolve your approach to architecture (and overall foundational thinking model) towards an "enabling thinking model". This approach aims at enabling increased learning and knowledge diffusion in the organization and with that allow people/teams close to problems to better learn and with that better design and decide.


⭐️ Why

Because modern organizations need to shift from "Controlling" to "Enabling Thinking" in order to be able to achieve a sustainable fast flow of value & change, and with that better respond to the different challenges and opportunities emerging in their environment.

One of the critical aspects to accomplish that is to modernize your approach to architecture, in particular adopt "Architecture as an Enabling Thinking approach" (and possibly (re)position Architecture team/networks as an Enabling Team). This means you stop having a central "Architecture Team" controlling architecture, and transition to an approach where architecture is decentralized, and designed and decided by teams/people close to the problems (with the possibility of still having Architects facilitating multi-team/broader architectural topics).

For this to work, there must be a fundamental shift, which focuses on maximizing learning in the organization.


ℹ️ What

I will share the foundational ideas of "Enabling Thinking", Enabling Teams and how to apply these ideas to modernize your approach to architecture.

We will explore different methods and techniques, and have multiple exercises that help consolidate the fundamental ideas to adopt this new thinking model. We will also look at essential aspects that can help adopting and bring these ideas into your organization's operating model.

Architecture as and Enabling Team and Thinking approach is in my view one of the most important and relevant (Architecture Topologies)[https://esilva.net/architecture-topologies] for most modern software tech-enabled organizations. Organizations that fail to adopt such thinking models and practices will struggle to achieve a sustaianble fast flow of value & change and respond to the many challenges and opportunities arising in their environment.


πŸ‘€ Who should attend

Anyone helping driving Architecture and how it is approached in the organization. This can be people working as Architect, or being part of an Architecture Team, or can also be Tech Leads, Staff Engineers, Directors, etc., who are driving important decisions and coaching their teams on the practices around Architecture.

πŸ’‘ These workshops and coaching sessions can also be interesting for Architecture teams, as a way to collectively understand how to evolve into positioning Architecture as an Enabling Team. This tends to mean stop being the ones designing, and focusing on helping teams, on whatever is needed, to enable them to better design and decide.


πŸ”  Formats

  • 🌟 Masterclass (2-3h)[πŸ§‘πŸ»β€πŸ’»,🀝] - session where your executives, leaders, change agents and anyone involved on the topic can get an introduction to the topic. We also spend time in your questions in the topic and go into possible options to move forward in this topic in your organization.
  • πŸ” Sense-making Workshop (~1-day - 2x 3.5h)[πŸ§‘πŸ»β€πŸ’»,🀝] - workshop sessions for people involved on the topic, where we consolidate the basics, however we spend most of the time exploring the challenges and opportunities in your organization specific context. You can see this as a sort of "assessment" session. We finish the session identifying possible options to move forward.
  • 🧭 Sense & Orient Workshop (~2-days - 4x 3.5h)[πŸ§‘πŸ»β€πŸ’»,🀝] - workshop sessions for people involved on the topic to learn the basics, but spend most of the time exploring challenges and opportunities in your organization's specific context, and defining what are the important options to focus on, including shaping & defining specific first steps. You can see this session as the sense-making session extended with defining concrete first actions to address the most strategic challenges and opportunities in your organization.
  • πŸ—ΊοΈ Custom Exploration - a custom assignment (with a flex amount of time) where we explore your particular challenges around this topic.

(πŸ§‘πŸ»β€πŸ’» online | 🀝 in-person)

ℹ️ All of these workshops can be arranged for your company. I will soon arrange public instances - stay tuned (or ping me for more information).


πŸ“₯ Contacts

.