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Give Engineering a Board for Designs

Route design reviews to an Engineering board chaired by a principal engineer, with one approval and the fast lane, and refer up to the Design Authority what goes beyond its remit.

#What You'll Build

An Engineering Board that decides design reviews:

  • a principal engineer chairs it;
  • one approval from an engineer is enough;
  • a low-risk design that follows an adopted pattern clears in the fast lane;
  • anything beyond its remit goes up to the Design Authority, with a reason.

Decisions, standards and exceptions don't move.

This works in Archigov 0.2 and later.

#1. Create the Board

As the platform admin, choose Governance → Boards → New Board:

  • Code: ENG
  • Name: Engineering Board
  • Purpose: Decides design reviews for systems no team board covers, and refers up what goes beyond its remit.

#2. Seat the Engineers

Under Manage Members, seat Tom Nguyen as chair, and Sanjay Patel and Ada Okafor as decision makers. Leave the board without areas: a board with no areas counts approvals instead.

#3. Take the Design Reviews

Under Decision Flow → Routing, choose Edit Routing, add a rule for Design, and set Priority to 50.

The Engineering Board's routing rule
One rule: design reviews, with priority 50.

The Design Authority already has a general design rule at priority 100. Two general rules tie, and the lower number wins, so design reviews now come here. A team board that names applications is more specific, so it still wins its own teams' designs.

#4. Make It Light

On the Design row of Workflows by Review Type, choose Add Workflow:

  • keep the approvals step as it starts on a board without areas: Mode Count, Minimum 1, Seats Decision maker;
  • under Fast Lane, turn on Offer a Fast Lane, and keep Require At Least One Adopted Pattern ticked.

Choose Save Policy. A design now needs one engineer's yes, and the chair declares the outcome. A low-risk design that follows an adopted pattern and passes every check is ready for the chair at once.

#5. Refer Up What Belongs Higher

Some designs change something every team relies on. On such a review, the chair chooses Declare outcome, then:

  • Outcome: Referred to another board;
  • Refer to: the Design Authority;
  • Reason: why it belongs there. The reason is recorded in the audit trail.
Referring a design to the Design Authority
The Engineering Board's chair refers a design that changes the shared identity platform.

The review moves to the Design Authority, the positions recorded so far are superseded, and its areas are derived again. The audit trail keeps both boards' part.

#Good to Know

  • Only design reviews move. Decisions still go to the Design Authority, or to a domain board, and exceptions to the Policy & Compliance Board.
  • The fast lane is per board. It is offered by the design policy of the board that receives the review.