Technical Advisory or Architecture Board: Which One Is Right for You?

If your situation is like most, it is likely that your organization lacks either a technical advisory or architecture board within the agency or across the spectrum of agencies. Heck, you may have neither and that may be good, but the boards can be beneficial. Implementing either type can help with the transitional changes brought about with election cycles or even through regular legislative changes at local, state or federal levels. Those changes certainly can impact an organization’s efforts whether viewed from the perspective of a singular agency or at the enterprise level. Assuming we are focusing on the enterprise level, say at a central IT organization, what can you expect from either board? 

First take an assessment of your organizational model. If the central IT organization can indeed impart control (lightly stated), then either board can succeed. If your model is federated, an architecture board will likely face additional challenges.

Back to the topic, though, what is the difference — or is there a difference? From an IT viewpoint, both boards focus on changes within the IT industry. Both utilize their business knowledge to determine if the new or updated technology could be beneficial. And as a note, membership for either board should consist of business and technical leaders. 

Generally, a technical advisory board operates as follows:

• Provides high-level strategic advice on the latest technical advances and how they relate to an agency’s needs.
• Provides insight into technical advances from an independent viewpoint.
• Functions more as a resource with little-to-no binding decision-making authority.

While a technical architecture board operates as follows:

• Provides high-level strategic direction on the latest technical advances and how they align with overall goals.
• Seen as a decision-making authority that has the power to approve (or reject) technical directions.
• Utilizes research and their experience to provide direction that ensures alignment with strategic goals and aims to eliminate redundant efforts, and limits (or eliminates) incompatible technologies.

The points above provide the typical differences between the two board types. So, which is better? There are many other things to contemplate, including:

• The overall strength of the agency IT teams.
• The variability of technical directions (staff developers, contract programming, SaaS-focused, etc.)
• The board’s strength at understanding broad business needs and technical advances, and at establishing standards.
• The board’s ability to enforce governance throughout the agency landscape.

If governance or standards approved by a board cannot be enforced, then the board really functions as an advisory board.  An advisory board can still fulfill the second bullet point above, except that the insight is seen more as a governance model rather than governance standard. 

Since our technology landscape continues to change and change rapidly, both board types can provide benefits. If neither board exists, establishing a technical architecture board implies more organizational change than the advisory version, so allow time for it to mold itself into the organization.

Dan Kempton is the Sr. IT Advisor at North Carolina Department of Information Technology. An accomplished IT executive with over 35 years of experience, Dan has worked nearly equally in the private sector, including startups and mid-to-large scale companies, and the public sector. His Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science fuel his curiosity about adopting and incorporating technology to reach business goals. His experience spans various technical areas including system architecture and applications. He has served on multiple technology advisory boards, ANSI committees, and he is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Industrial & Systems Engineering school at NC State University. He reports directly to the CIO for North Carolina, providing technical insight and guidance on how emerging technologies could address the state’s challenges.

Image by Stefan Tamm from Pixabay