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Run Your Design Authority

The enterprise level of governance: a Design Authority that decides designs, decisions, standards and patterns, beside a Policy & Compliance Board for policies, principles and exceptions.

#What You Have

Every instance starts with two boards, and the demo seats them:

  • The Design Authority (DA) decides designs, decisions, standards and patterns. It is also the fallback: any review no routing rule claims goes here.
  • The Policy & Compliance Board (PCB) decides policies, principles and exceptions.

This is the enterprise level. Many organisations need nothing more.

#1. Look at Who Sits Where

Open Governance → Boards → Design Authority. Composition shows the seats:

  • a chair, who moderates and declares outcomes and has no vote;
  • decision makers, each owning areas of responsibility (Security, Data, Integration and so on);
  • a reviewer, who is advisory;
  • a secretary, who runs sessions.

Area Ownership marks any area that no decision maker owns as Unowned, because a review touching it could never be approved.

#2. Read Its Routing

Under Decision Flow → Routing, the Design Authority's rules name a review type and nothing else: any kind, any category, any application.

The Design Authority's routing rules
Decision Flow on the Design Authority: one general rule per review type it decides, then the workflow for each type.

General rules are the least specific there can be. Any board you add later wins the reviews its own rules cover: a domain board through a category, a team board through its applications, a delivery board through a lower priority number. The Design Authority keeps the rest.

#3. Read Its Workflow

Workflows by Review Type lists the steps each type passes:

  • an automatic pre-review;
  • Positions by area: every area the review touches needs a position from its owner;
  • Chair declares.

The design row also offers a fast lane. A low-risk design that follows an adopted pattern and passes every check is ready for the chair without waiting for positions.

#4. Run a Sitting

The secretary plans a session under Sessions. Its agenda is derived from the reviews routed here: ready items first, then a consent agenda for items already satisfied when the session opens. See Board sessions.

#When to Add Another Level

Add a level when one of these is true:

  • The Design Authority's backlog keeps growing. A delivery or team board takes the routine designs.
  • A topic needs specialists the Design Authority lacks. A domain board takes it.
  • Engineering waits on monthly sittings for low-risk changes. A delivery board with the fast lane decides them in days.
  • Teams own their systems and their decisions. Team boards take them, and the Design Authority sees what crosses teams.