Hello, everybody. Welcome to the ThoughtWorks Podcasts. Today, we're talking about architectural

governance. My name is Rebecca Parsons. I'm the chief technology officer for ThoughtWorks and one of the co-hosts of the

ThoughtWorks podcasts. My name is Mike Mason and I'm a head of technology with ThoughtWorks. I work

closely with Rebecca and I'm also one of the hosts of the podcast series. I'd like to introduce

our two guests today, Jamak and Johnny. Shammak.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Jemak Deghany.

I'm one of the principal consultants in ThoughtWorks and joining you from our San Francisco office.

Hi, and I'm Johnny LaRoy playing a head of tech role in North America with ThoughtWorks.

Thank you, Jamak and Johnny. So we're going to be talking

about architectural governance today. And I'm not going to do the dreaded thing and ask for a

definition because defining architecture, defining governance, that's always complicated. But

tell me what your views are on architectural governance and why it is so important.

Well, first, thank you, Rebecca, for not asking the difficult question of defining architecture.

I have simplified the definition of governance for myself to be the framework that guides making decisions around the architectural ecosystem in an organization.

And often this framework is guided and influenced by essentially the vision and the mission

of the organization, the vision of the business.

So that's simply to me the definition of the

governance. And it matters because it guides the decision making at all different levels of,

you know, kind of the technical stack and the technical landscape in an organization. And it helps

people at all different levels make daily decisions, essentially.

Yeah, I can add in there because governance is often a scary word that we often try to avoid.

...