Architecture Portfolio Lead

Job description

Job responsibilities

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES FOR THIS ROLE

Portfolio intake, triage and prioritisation

Run the EA intake process: capture new demand, triage requests, and allocate work to appropriate practitioners (solution, technical and enterprise architects).

Provide advice and guidance to requesters to ensure submissions are clear, complete and prioritised appropriately.

Maintain a transparent pipeline and publish status so service users understand where they are in the queue.

Collaborate with delivery teams, including the local Project Management Office, to ensure that the roadmaps are fully aligned.

Architecture Review Board (ARB) governance

Plan and administer the Architecture Review Board: manage submissions, set agendas, coordinate attendance, circulate papers, capture decisions and actions, and maintain the artefact library.Ensure timely architectural reviews for all initiatives and escalate risks or blockers early.

Actively partner with delivery teams to ensure that they are working with architecture early and are booked in good time. Keep in close contact with teams to ensure that needs are identified early that architectural governance supports and enables, rather than blocks, progress.

Track adherence to architecture principles, standards and patterns and support technical assurance alongside architects and vendors.Manage any waivers or exceptions to the standards, track closely, and report on impact to leadership as required.

Resource management, capacity forecasting, and utilisation tracking

Maintain the EA resource profile: forecast practitioner availability, assignments and utilisation; proactively smooth demand; and ensure highpriority work is resourced.

Publish forward schedules and keep diaries aligned to review cycles, workshops and supporting activities.

Does not professionally manage the team but has day-to-day responsibility for their allocation and priorities, and is expected to use their judgement and experience to resolve most first-level process and priority calls.

Procurement, supplier and contract coordination

Coordinate managed service and consultancy engagements: draft/verify SoWs against scope and outcomes, align resourcing, track deliverables, and maintain an accurate cost and activity forecast in collaboration with Procurement and Finance.

Support any procurement activities that the department is contributing to, including ensuring that baseline architectural requirements are included and all materials have a specialist review before approval.

Documentation, tooling and ways of working

Keep the architecture model and portfolio documentation up to date (for example, repository records, catalogues, standards, decisions).

Maintain team boards so tasks have accurate status, impediments are unblocked, and time spent is captured.

Proactively review documentation to identify gaps and prompt practitioners to complete or improve artefacts.

Financial tracking and reporting

Track budget requests, spending forecasts and actuals for EArelated engagements; provide regular reports and highlight variances.

Stakeholder engagement and strategic planning

Engage with programme and project managers inside and outside the directorate to maintain an accurate demand forecast into EA.

Support directorate business planning on behalf of the Enterprise Architect: organise engagement sessions, capture demand, synthesise inputs, and contribute to highlevel designs, cost estimates and bills of materials.

Contribute to policy and operating procedure updates across the EA process, aligned to Trust governance and DDaT good practice.

Ownership and initiative

Take ownership of actions to completion, ensuring decisions, risks, issues and benefits are captured and tracked; proactively chase followups and unblock progress.

Ensure that the team continually improves their processes and ways of working.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• 2x A-levels or equivalent qualifications in literate and numerate subjects
• Bachelor's Degree, or demonstrated equivalent professional experience

Desirable

• Master's Degree, or equivalent professional experience
• Management or leadership qualifications, or equivalent professional experience
• Service management qualification or equivalent experience
• Delivery or portfolio management qualification or equivalent experience
• Architecture qualification or equivalent experience
• Process engineering qualification or equivalent experience

Experience

Essential

• Working in a multi-functional department balancing competing priorities
• Managing stakeholders, including expectation setting and negotiating resources
• Managing resources, teams, workloads, throughput, and allocations for a team
• Managing repositories of documentation and filing systems
• Identifying and mitigating risks
• Using technical background and experience to triage incoming requests
• Analysing data and presenting in a varied formats to different stakeholders

Desirable

• Leadership role in an NHS Digital or IT department
• Change or delivery management
• Technology architecture
• Managing a portfolio of projects and a specialist team's contributions to them
• Managing diaries and prioritising with effective technical/situational judgement
• Familiarity or experience with Enterprise Architecture frameworks
• Any prior experience designing solutions or improving processes
• Any prior experience with contract management or negotiation
• Any prior experience with structured procurement and evaluation

Skills

Essential

• Self-starting, proactive approach to fulfilling a role not performing tasks
• Strong written communication, preparing papers, updates, and documentation
• Strong oral communication in one-to-one and small group conversations
• Understanding of the role and importance of technology architecture
• Understanding the importance of good documentation and record keeping

Desirable

• Technical background in any discipline, or science/engineering background
• Enough understanding of architecture to triage requests and manage delivery
• Ability to map processes, elicit requirements, and provide informed challenge
• Strong spreadsheet and data manipulation skills

Personal Qualities

Essential

• Relentless focus on user needs and experience
• Problem-solving mindset - focusing on continually improving outcomes
• Seeing the bigger picture - understand how your work and the work of your team supports wider objectives and meets the diverse needs of stakeholders
• Able to thrive in a complex and busy environment
• Willing and able to accept some role ambiguity as the service develops
• Able to retain long-term motivation to an end goal that is several years away

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer details

Employer name

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Kemp House

London

EC1V 2PD

Employer's website

https://www.moorfields.nhs.uk/work-for-us (Opens in a new tab)