# Architect a People Management System

Status: draft · v0.1.0 · Lock Method
draft reference — not a fitted standard

Turn a business and workforce need into a coherent target system before individual policies, processes, practices, or technologies are designed.

## Purpose
Define the purpose, outcomes, boundary, operating model, components, interfaces, authority, evidence, constraints, and transition logic for one people-management system.

## Steps
1. Frame the system and architecture decision — Establish the actual system problem rather than beginning from a preferred program or tool.
2. Diagnose the current system — See how policy, process, practice, roles, data, systems, controls, measures, and interfaces behave together.
3. Define target purpose and operating model — Set coherent design direction before specifying components.
4. Architect components and interfaces — Specify how the complete mechanism must fit together.
5. Evaluate options and establish the roadmap — Convert architecture into an executable, risk-aware sequence.
6. Transfer and govern the architecture — Keep downstream work coherent and update architecture through controlled learning.

## Connections
- upstream: Discover and Synthesize Process Evidence (/processes/discover-and-synthesize-process-evidence) — trigger: Architecture requires evidence beyond the current approved estate.
- downstream: Redesign Work and Workflow (/processes/redesign-work-and-workflow) — trigger: The roadmap authorizes workflow or operating-process design.
- downstream: Select a Business System (/processes/select-business-system) — trigger: The roadmap authorizes technology selection.

## Measures
- Architecture decision quality: Architecture engagements reaching an accepted decision with no unresolved critical component or interface.
- Design-object coverage: Required design objects and interfaces with defined purpose, owner, disposition, and acceptance divided by all identified requirements.
- Architecture cycle time: Elapsed time by system, consequence, scope, evidence readiness, and disposition.
- Downstream design conformance: Reviewed designs accepted without material architecture conflict divided by reviewed designs.
- Architecture exceptions: Open exceptions by severity, component, interface, owner, age, and disposition.
- Architecture guardrails: Context-specific guardrail set reviewed alongside system outcomes and delivery evidence.