Solution Architect reporting line , is it EA manager or Development manager?

Question

we are a big Telecom company , recently EA office established in our company and we have an internal debate whether the technical solution architecture should be part from Development team or EA team responsibility ? based on that , the solution architect reporting line needs to be decided.

Answer 1

In my previous job, the development teams reported to development managers who reported to the CIO. The architecture team reported to the CTO (who was the closest thing to an EA in that environment). In that sense, I would say that the solution architecture team should fall in the same reporting line as the EA team.

In my opinion, one of the key questions to ask here comes down to responsibilities and primary focus - an architecture team focuses on quality and long-term sustainability (in my view), while a dev team focuses on delivery - an architecture team reporting to a development manager might end up being pushed towards short-term delivery gains rather than long-term quality. Also, how many development teams do you have? Architecture should be an overlapping concern - if you have multiple dev teams, the architects working on those teams shouldn't be isolated to only having sight of what's happening in their own teams. You can also set up an architecture board/forum where architects from various teams can come together to share knowledge, review each others' solutions, and ensure that architectural standards are applied across the board.

Answer 2

That is a very difficult question to answer because the "right" answer really depends upon the makeup of your organization, various teams, culture, etc. That said, I'll still give you my opinion :-)

In my opinion, since you said an EA office was established then they (the EA team) should focus on "enterprise" (the "E" in EA) concerns and leave the solution-specific architecture to the development teams.

As an example, the organization I work for has an EA team (in the interest of full disclosure, I lead our EA team) and 9 applications development (AppDev) teams. Each of the AppDev teams has a lead developer. From our point of view, we see the lead developer as the "Applications Architect" for the AppDev team. While the lead developer is responsible for providing the architectural vision and design for the apps they created/maintain they are also responsible for working with the enterprise architects (on the EA team) to ensure they are providing designs that fit within the overall enterprise architectural goals communicated by the EA team.

As Gordon mentioned in his comment above, everyone needs to work together to ensure the appropriate value is being delivered. However, since you do have an EA team, I'd let them focus on the enterprise concerns and let your development teams focus on the application-specific concerns all-the-while working together to ensure all the needs are met.