An architecture review board (ARB) is a governance body that ensures IT endeavors align with the entity’s objectives. The microservices architecture review board can help in the attainment of the following.
- Better budget management and expenditure on solutions
- Transparent, informed and fully qualified decision making
- Better management and reduction of complexity
- Greater problem-solving ability
- Solution re-usability via reference models, topologies and standardization
The architecture review board bears responsibility for approving, recommending and validating solutions for the business that fulfill defined criteria. All decisions and outcomes are recorded to support decision making in the future.
The ARB can help with the implementation of microservices architectures that align with the business’s short-term and long-term objectives. To this end, the ARB will ensure that the microservices architecture design, development, and implementation follow the entity’s industry best practices, standards, and policies.
Hence, from the definition mentioned above of the microservices architecture review board, it is clear that current and new solutions have to be consistent with the financial and strategic objectives of the company.
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Microservices Architectural Review Board Objectives
The following are the objectives and goals of the microservices architecture review board.
- Mitigate risks to the business via due diligence and decision making processes that facilitate informed and transparent decisions.
- Control and optimize costs through technology consolidation, reuse and informed decision making.
- Set up enterprise architecture and technology compliance for managing enterprise complexity.
- Such goals are achieved via the following measures.
- Identifying, validating and communicating major architectural risks and gaps that an initiative may carry.
- Facilitate enterprise-wide transparency and visibility for sound decision making.
- Streamlined processes for assessing the feasibility of proposed solutions.
- Ensuring that proposed solutions leverage industry best practices for the microservices architecture to work as intended.
- Quantifiable and qualitative decision memorandums that can be used as a reference for future decision making.
- Follow microservice architecture compliance with relevant mandatory standards.
- Identify those areas of microservice architecture design and development that will have to revise for compliance with standards.
- Keep tabs on emerging technologies to see how they might prove to be expedient for the company.
Care should be taken before the microservice architecture board is set up to minimize flaws and problems from the outset. If care is not taken initially, then the microservice architecture review board may fail to achieve its objectives.
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What the Microservice Architecture Review Board Must Consider
Here is what the enterprise should consider before they set up the microservice architecture review board.
- What is the charter and purpose of the microservice architecture review board?
- How will the microservice architecture review board bring value to the organization?
- How can the microservice architecture review board empower cross-functional teams?
- How will the microservice review board help to mitigate risk, reduce complexity and expedite the project?
- What should be the frequency of meetings, and under what conditions should personnel engage the microservice architecture review board?
The microservices architecture review board assesses and reviews the architecture to ensure compliance, the achievement of organizational IT objectives and alignment with references and standards. The board needs members who are experts in IT and microservices architecture. Thus technical leaders and domain architects are selected as board members, and their opinions are taken when the need arises.
The microservices architecture board meets at periodic intervals to scrutinize implementations and architecture for improvements. This should happen at least once a month or more frequently if that is necessary.
The microservices architecture review board has a key role in implementing the microservices architecture from the moment design starts. The board creates and selects references and standards for the endeavor. All of this is maintained and reviewed regularly. Thus, the microservice architecture review board is influential in keeping microservice design, development and implementation initiatives congruent with corporate policies.
The microservices architecture review board will ensure that the following criteria are fulfilled at all stages of design, development, implementation and operation.
Higher Productivity
Microservices are preferred since they are loosely coupled. This provides several advantages. Developing and implementing new technologies is much simpler with microservices architecture since there will be fewer consequences for the entire system.
Singular monolithic architectures are problematic since everything is interdependent and linked with everything else. Thus, implementing new technologies can have unexpected ramifications in unexpected places due to this factor.
The microservices architecture review board will check to see that microservices are indeed loosely coupled so that such problems do not transpire.
With microservices, applications can be broken down into smaller components that are autonomous and thus easier to maintain and upgrade. In the microservice architecture, constituent services can be managed, deployed and developed independently. They can make use of various programming languages and technologies with less risk of unintended consequences. The review board will have to check whether or not these characteristics are present in the current system.
More Resilience
Performance issues are more easily identified and resolved when microservice architecture is implemented. Thus, the review will ensure a modular structure in the microservice architecture being implemented so that faults can be isolated and rectified more easily. When faults do transpire, the system as a whole is not affected as strongly as monolithic systems. Downtimes are reduced to a minimum. Technical experts can make necessary changes to modules without having to redeploy the whole system. Hence microservices provide for more resilient systems.
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Better Scalability
Since each service can use different technologies and programming languages, the development team can opt for the optimal technological stack without having to worry over compatibility.
As a result of this, it is possible to scale individual services separately and add new components without redeploying the whole system. Developers can also avoid downtime due to this. They can also deploy services in multiple services without impacting system performance.
Conclusion for Microservices Architecture Review Board
The microservice architecture review board must ensure that microservice architecture is properly implemented during the design and development phase so that such benefits can be realized.
Further blogs within this Microservices Architecture Review Board and Best Practices in Deploying the Strangler Pattern to Refractory Legacy Systems category.