Building one enterprise architecture practice for Partena Professional Group
After acquiring EasyPay Group, Partena Professional Group needed to bring two different enterprise architecture practices together. xplus, part of Yuma, helped establish one shared approach, with clear roles, governance and decision-making processes to support the group’s Landscape 2030 program.
xplus, part of Yuma, helped Partena Professional Group turn two different architecture practices into one shared way of working, giving teams clearer roles and decision paths as the organization works toward its future IT landscape.
After acquiring EasyPay Group, Partena Professional Group brought together organizations with different systems and approaches to enterprise architecture.
With the Landscape 2030 IT convergence program ahead, the group needed a common architecture practice that could support decisions across the organization and connect business and IT.
The business challenge: bringing two architecture practices together
Partena Professional and EasyPay Group had developed their enterprise architecture practices independently. Roles, responsibilities, and governance now needed to be aligned across the combined organization.
At the same time, Partena Professional Group wanted architecture to become part of everyday IT decision-making, helping teams move forward rather than operating as a separate control function.
The ambition: making architecture work in practice
The goal was to establish a dedicated enterprise architecture function and a shared way of working that could support Landscape 2030 and continue to evolve with the organization.
That required clear decision rights, common governance, and a structured way to document architectural choices. Just as importantly, internal teams needed to be able to use and develop the practice themselves.
The approach
1. Creating a shared architecture model
We reviewed existing practices and documentation across both organizations and spoke with business and IT stakeholders to understand where processes, responsibilities, and expectations differed.
Using xplus’ 6+1 framework, we evaluated the key building blocks of the architecture practice. This gave us a structured basis for identifying gaps and defining a shared model, including architecture roles, domains, responsibilities, and governance.
We also helped establish the foundation artifacts the new EA function would need, including the application landscape and a business capability map. By linking applications to capabilities and business functions, teams could assess new demands by their wider business impact rather than focusing only on the systems involved.
2. Turning governance into a working practice
The next step was to operationalize the new model.
We established recurring forums for architectural decisions and clarified where decisions are made, who is involved, and who is responsible.
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) introduced a consistent way to capture important decisions, their context, and their rationale. We developed templates, guidance, and a supporting workflow, with a shared Confluence environment as a central home for the architecture practice.
This made architectural decisions traceable and reviewable, while making it easier for architects to build on previous work and transfer knowledge.
3. Embedding architecture in the organization
Rather than handing over a theoretical model, a dedicated xplus Enterprise Architect joined the IT Foundation team to help put the new practice into use.
Working alongside Partena Professional Group’s architects, we introduced the new processes, restarted architecture review cycles, and coached internal teams in using the frameworks and tools. We also mapped the handoffs between enterprise, domain, solution, and software architecture across the demand-to-delivery process, creating clearer connections between business needs, architectural decisions, development, and operations.
This allowed the new practice to be tested and refined in day-to-day work while building the internal knowledge to take it forward.
The outcome: clearer decisions across one combined organization
Partena Professional Group now has a shared enterprise architecture practice across Partena Professional and EasyPay Group. Teams have clearer responsibilities, architectural decisions follow defined governance, and those decisions are documented consistently and in a traceable way.
Most importantly, the practice is actually being used. Internal architects are using the new processes and frameworks, giving Partena Professional Group a foundation it can keep developing as Landscape 2030 progresses.
Data from different source systems is transformed into reliable, standardized, and meaningful information for business, analytics, and AI. Quality is monitored end-to-end, from technical data health and content quality to business performance.
