In order to be successful in today's insurance landscape,insurer CIOs need a strong architecture to ensure that techprojects are consistent with the company's overall direction.

Architecture governance is in direct conflict with projectmanagement, according to a recent Novarica report "Architecture Governance: a CIO checklist." Theproject manager builds technology solutions in the shortestpossible time, for the lowest cost. But this may not be ideal forcreating long-term business functions that deliver strategicbusiness capability.

"Enterprise architecture is about taking a holistic view ofrisk, avoiding long-term unforeseen consequences, and makinginformed decisions to manage total company risk to withinpre-defined appetites," writes Mitch Wein, principal in the insurancepractice at Novarica, and one of the report authors, along withSteven Kaye, research and knowledge systems manager.

In order to determine how to set up an effective architecturalgovernance process, Novarica put together a list of guidelines.Read them below and on the following pages.

1. Identify key business and ITstrategic drivers and create reference documents that arbitratetechnology decisions

2. Establish a targettechnology reference architecture that reflects all possibleinvestment needed without economic constraint

3. Link architecturegovernance to funding governance through logical gates

4. Create a standard template to capture all dimensionsof the architecture review and highlight the tradeoffs that may beneeded

5. Gain commitment in writing for futureprojects and investments

6. Adopt a test-and-learn culture for architecture. Testthe proposed solution and its expected benefits, implementationcomplexity and its technical feasibility

7. Support the architecture processconsistently