by Karan Mishra
Abstract
As organizations increasingly adopt cloud-native and distributed architectures, resilience becomes a non-negotiable requirement. Traditional methods of resilience management handled late in the lifecycle are no longer viable. This paper introduces a resilience pattern governance framework that embeds resilience thinking into enterprise architecture (EA) practice. By leveraging engineered solution patterns, aligning with industry governance frameworks, and incorporating platform engineering, the approach promotes automation, scalability, and cost-efficiency. The proposed model supports risk-informed pattern selection and maturity-based implementation, all while streamlining compliance and reducing cognitive overhead for IT teams.
Background
Resilience is increasingly critical for IT teams as cloud-based infrastructure accelerates delivery cycles. Historically handled late in development by infrastructure and operations teams, resilience now demands an intentional, architecture-led approach. This paper presents a pattern governance framework aimed at:
- Linking solution architectures to resilience risk
- Providing engineered solution patterns aligned to risk profiles
- Enabling resilient-by-design architectures
- Automating the governance of architecture and compliance
Resilience and Architecture Governance Challenges
Resilience is a non-functional but critical requirement spanning availability, confidentiality, and integrity. Business teams rarely articulate it explicitly, leaving gaps in accountability across Chief Information Security Office (CISO), application, and infrastructure teams. Enterprise Architecture (EA) plays a central role in institutionalizing resilience by defining and governing reusable solution patterns. Traditional architecture governance methods like manual reviews don’t scale with agile delivery. Key challenges around architecture governance relate to conformance of system design to architectural specifications and guidance, and the continuous compliance of deployed systems with the configurations and specifications in designs.
Historically, architectural reviews at key points in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) enable architects to perform reviews, or for application teams to assess their compliance with all relevant standards. However, these methods are not scalable, with architect time a scarce resource, and modern agile delivery teams release deployable changes on a regular basis.
It is therefore imperative that governance and enforcement of architecture standard conformance and on-going compliance with approved configurations be as automated as possible, with consistent touchpoints into standardized aspects of the end-to-end SDLC process.
Resilience Risk Quantification
A key challenge that every solution architect faces is ensuring that the resilience of a solution architecture is appropriate to the business risk. Often, business stakeholders can offer little guidance, leading to a risk where architects will implement resilience measures that considerably increase the operational costs of a system with no obvious business benefit, or solutions which underestimate the risks end up causing reputational, financial, and/or systemic harm.
It is therefore important that a methodology is in place to minimize the risks of architects making wildly inappropriate choices with respect to the resilient solutions adopted by systems.
Pattern Governance Frameworks and Alignment
Effective pattern governance requires alignment with IT governance, risk, and compliance frameworks (e.g., NIST SP 800-53, COBIT, ITIL). Patterns must:
- Clearly articulate benefits and costs
- Align with regulatory and industry standards
- Support enterprise architecture strategies
Pattern Governance Operating Model Vision
The vision for the Pattern Governance Operating Model aims to provide a holistic approach to the identification, design, and selection of resilience patterns. The model depicts how business context and risk considerations drive application technical design, which incorporates architecture patterns and resiliency requirements. These feed into standardized resilience patterns, enabling the creation of engineered resilient solutions. The process ensures resilience is embedded early in design and consistently applied, aligning technical implementation with business needs and risk mitigation. The conceptual operating model is shown below:
Figure: MVP Pattern Governance Operating Model Vision
Key roles involved in the operating model include:
| Role | Description |
| CISO | Supports identification and quantification of risks and mandatory resilience requirements |
| Enterprise Architects | Guides pattern identification, design and selection. |
| Platform Engineering | Engineers pattern solutions and makes available for consumption by application teams. |
| Application Architects | Application solution architects produce technical design, adopt resilience and resilient architecture patterns based on risks. Application Architects consume engineered solutions where they exist. |
Additional roles may be identified – for example, line-of-business roles, product management roles, other CIO roles, second-line risk roles, finance roles, vendor management roles, etc.
A formal RACI aligned to specific organization needs will be developed to reflect key activities and the required touchpoints with different organizations and their related capabilities.
Resilience Patterns
Resilience patterns are proven configurations of technology services that provide enhanced resilience capabilities to a technology service. A resilience pattern may involve multiple technology services configured collectively to provide an overall resilience outcome that can be readily adopted by application architects. Resilience patterns are neutral to business context, although they are specific to technical context.
Patterns are categorized per NIST resilience domains: anticipate, withstand, recover, and adapt. Examples include redundancy, scalability, observability, and deployment automation.
Pattern Selection and Risk Alignment
A key goal of pattern governance is to enable application and solution architects to identify the most appropriate resilience patterns the application should adopt to meet resilience expectations. Once a pattern is selected, designated architects are responsible for ensuring the pattern is adopted as intended in the deployed system.
The pattern governance framework is intended to minimize the amount of information application teams need to know about, specifically on ‘how’ a resilience pattern achieves resilience goals. Application teams need to focus on
- Understanding the architectural implications of a risk assessment
- Aligning the cost of adopting a resilient pattern with the risk it is addressing.
The pattern selection process should be:
- Guided by risk assessments
- Simplified via pre-approved patterns
- Designed to align cost with value (e.g., via cost-benefit analysis or Open FAIR-based frameworks)
Automated tools and surveys can help teams select patterns that balance risk reduction and implementation effort.
Pattern Governance Strategies
Adopting resilience patterns may require additional investments and formal approval through Technology Risk Reviews. EA should capture pattern adoption via automated data collection (enabled by AI) and architect attestations. Dashboards and metrics like pattern coverage, adoption timelines, and alignment to risk support governance.
The EA team cannot formally review all designs proposed by application teams to ensure resilience requirements are being met. However, every application team must have an accountable architect willing to attest to the resilience characteristics of the application.
For every application design, an application architect must attest which resilience patterns are targeted for the application and its individual deployable components. This information can be captured via surveys, ideally aligned with release planning processes.
Longer term, application teams should be able to consume engineered resilience solutions to minimize the risk of mis-implementing a pattern. Engineered solutions will include automated configuration validation, to ensure resilience goals are being met.
Because resilience capabilities may take time to engineer fully – especially over the full lifecycle of an application – a resilience roadmap may be needed for some applications, which will indicate which components will be adopting which resilience patterns over a given period to close identified risk gaps.
Application pattern adoption roadmaps need to be captured in a data-driven EA tool to allow relevant resilience-related risk metrics to be calculated and published, as well as to help platform engineering to assess demand for engineered solutions.
Resilience Pattern Governance Maturity Model
A Maturity Model is a useful tool for gauging progress with respect to process maturity, and for establishing clear objectives with respect to goals to be achieved in the medium term.
The following is a simplified maturity model for pattern governance that can help an organization understand where it is today with respect to resilient pattern governance, and where it ultimately wants to be.
A simplified maturity model helps track organizational progress:
| Level | Description |
| Initial | Ad hoc approach to resilience and automationNo formal processes for identifying or implementing resilient patternLimited awareness of resilience concepts across the organizationManual governance processes with little to no automation |
| Repeatable | Basic resilient patterns identified but not consistently appliedSome automation of governance processes, but primarily manualInformal policies for resilience pattern implementation.Limited training on resilience concepts for key personnel. |
| Defined | Formal catalog of resilient design patterns establishedStandardized processes for pattern selection and implementationAutomated governance workflows for pattern approval and documentationRegular training programs on resilience and automation for relevant staff |
| Managed | Quantitative metrics for measuring effectiveness of resilience patternsAutomated monitoring and reporting on pattern usage and performanceIntegration of resilience patterns into enterprise architecture frameworksContinuous improvement process for refining and updating patterns |
| Optimized | AI-driven analysis and recommendation of optimal resilient patternsFully automated governance lifecycle for pattern managementSelf-adapting systems that dynamically apply resilient patternsPredictive analytics for anticipating resilience needs and emerging patterns |
Conclusion
This paper presents a strategic framework for resilience pattern governance aimed at enhancing an organization’s overall technology resilience posture. It emphasizes the need for a standardized, automated approach to managing resilience through reusable architectural patterns, enabling measurable risk reduction while maintaining cost-effectiveness and operational scalability.
The framework underscores the importance of cross-functional collaboration, particularly among CISO, Enterprise Architecture, and Platform Engineering teams to embed resilience into the design and deployment lifecycle. By aligning these key stakeholders around a unified governance model, organizations can achieve resilience objectives more efficiently and with reduced oversight complexity.
References
- National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations.
- ISACA. COBIT 2019 Framework: Governance and Management Objectives.
- ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition. AXELOS Limited, 2019.
- The Open Group. Open FAIR™ Risk Analysis Standard.
About the Author
Karan is a consulting leader specializing in technology strategy, with over 14 years of experience driving complex, technology-enabled transformation initiatives. He has led engagements across industries, combining deep expertise in enterprise architecture, system integration, technical assessments, and technology program management to deliver measurable business value.
Karan has been instrumental in helping client executives shape and communicate a clear technology transformation vision, align stakeholders around common business goals, and prioritize initiatives through actionable roadmaps. He has successfully guided clients from strategy through execution—defining product visions, planning roadmaps, and overseeing design and implementation phases.
His work has supported digital innovation and enterprise modernization for a wide range of public and private sector organizations, positioning him as a trusted advisor at the intersection of business and technology.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karanmishra
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