Standing Up the Enterprise Architecture Review Process

Context

As IT Solutions Architect at Angola LNG since 2018, I review the architecture and infrastructure changes that come through my domain. In 2023 I drafted the first version of what has since become the organisation's formal Enterprise Architecture Review Process.

Responsibility

My manager has set me formal goals I am accountable for: architecture reviews, signed assessments across the solutions the company has deployed, an inventory of how its systems integrate, a target identity architecture, and the decision log behind all of it. I also sit on the Change Advisory Board (CAB) that reviews proposed changes before they reach production.

Method

I organised an enterprise-architecture masterclass in 2025, which became the starting point for expanding and formalising the process I had first drafted in 2023. Since then I have stood up a Review Board that reviews designs before they are built, and drafted the principles underneath the process, mapped to TOGAF, COBIT and ITIL. I own the checklists used to assess an architecture and to bring a new vendor on. On the CAB, my working rule for any change that comes to me is three questions: what are we doing, why, and how.

Constraint

The CAB's role is not to block a change — it is to confirm the RFC carries the information and data it needs before it goes to production, and that the right subject-matter experts have had input. One RFC came in marked Urgent without that input; I held the line and asked for it anyway rather than waving it through.

Result

The process drafted in 2023 is now the one the company runs on — the formal gate significant architecture change goes through, alongside the ISO/IEC 27001 Foundation certification completed the same year, which underpins the governance side of the same work.