Section 5

Granite Insights: Satu Pajuniemi, expert in overall architecture

April 16, 2024

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Welcome again to the Graniitti Insights series!

In the fifth part of the series, we get to know more deeply about Satu, an expert in overall architecture. Read below how Satu talks about his role, his job duties and how he helps customers achieve their business goals.

1. Describe your role as an overall architecture expert?

- As an overall architecture expert, I am responsible for guiding and supporting the key personnel of the client's business as they plan the entity formed by the organization's business, its central information capital and the information systems that support them in such a way that they support the implementation of the organization's strategy.

2. What are the most important tasks in your role?

- My task is to bring to customers the best practices that support their design work and documentation of results. I took care of project planning and implementation and facilitated result-oriented workshops and expert work detailing the workshop results, and documented the results in the format chosen by the client. I listen, support and guide at work.

3. What challenges do you face in your work?

- Just the word overall architecture gives business representatives chills! It sounds like IT. I have to encourage customers to join in the design work of the overall architecture, i.e. lower the possible threshold. The overall architecture is not a technology, it is the identification of the parts of the entire organization and the dependencies between them. There are models and methods for designing the overall architecture, the participant brings with him an understanding and know-how of the content, i.e. the organization and his profession. The consultant helps in how the information is formed into a purposeful entity.

4. How do you take care of communication?

- Interaction is the key success factor of the overall architecture. Results cannot be produced in a laboratory, but the most important tool, business understanding, only happens in interaction with the customer's representatives. That is why the basis of my work model is interactive forms of work. In the workshops, we make use of group work methods, the goal of which is to obtain information efficiently and in a versatile way, and based on the information to produce a common vision on the topic of group work. In expert meetings, the results achieved together are refined. All the results of the project are always visible to all the necessary people and can be commented on and developed.

5. How does your role contribute to our customers' business goals?

- I made sure that when planning the target state of the overall architecture, the results are derived from the business goals. It is good to mirror the results to those goals whenever they occur and thus ensure the appropriateness of the results.

6. What kind of tools and methods do you use in planning and documenting the overall architecture?

The most important tool is created for planning and managing the overall architecture  TOGAF - architectural framework, of which there is a version applied to the Finnish public administration Public administration recommendation 197 (JHS 179). This Finnish version is also suitable for the business world.  

For interaction, I use tools suitable for each situation. Sometimes it means kraft paper and post-it notes, but after the corona period, mainly digital tools for video meetings as well as for doing group work and commenting on and developing results in an electronic group workspace. 

The documentation is always prepared using tools that meet the customer's needs. Nowadays, it often means some overall architecture modeling tool such as QPR, Sparx Systems' Enterprise architect, Arter Oy's ARC or IMS.  

7. In what ways do you support our customers in implementing the results of the overall architectural work?

- The overall architecture model includes change management and implementation support. In practice, we often do a gap analysis between the current and target status operations, and we consider development needs and measures and form a road map from the current status to the target status. The road map is then divided into concrete development projects and projects where the desired change is achieved.

8. What do you like best about your role?

- Meeting people, listening and challenging them. Internalizing new things and solving challenges on a logical level. It's when a customer who was reserved at the beginning says that this overall architecture is indeed useful and interesting.

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