Architecture Management in Software Development Organizations

As long as a software development organization drives several development projects in parallel the enterprise architecture gets more and more complex. Every initiative and every project has its own goals and timelines. This context implies a great challenge steering and managing the architecture to achieve more homogeneity, evolve according to new technology stacks and still pay credit to a necessary independence between projects. Short-term goals of the projects need to be balanced out with mid- and long-term objectives of the company. Therefore, architecture management measures should be considered, planned, and realized. This paper describes eight high-level architecture management patterns as starting point for central architecture teams, chiefs of architects, lead and principal software architects or CTOs.