The role of a Pega Center of Excellence

The diagram below shows various aspects of what a Pega COE should oversee.

In terms of  architecture and reuse, a Pega COE orchestrates the lifecycle of reusable assets by: 

• Reviewing all Pega reuse requests and determining fit and applicability for broader use
• Building, or facilitates building, of the reusable assets and then publishing them for consumption 
• Coordinating deployment and upgrades of reusable assets

Reuse governance within a Pega COE occurs at the intersection of Business and IT, and requires program-level knowledge to be effective.The COE operates with support from Executive Sponsors and Extended Team members. A COE can be centralized or distributed to suit enterprise needs.

• Pega COE - The Pega COE sits in the middle, brokering relationships between different groups in your enterprise. They coordinate external teams to request services and negotiate requirements for compliance. A Reuse Manager within your Pega COE helps to ensure great outcomes. A Pega COE in the middle can help to manage the complexities of working with these different teams. The reusable assets they build can help save time when the capability is reused, because it has already been delivered once.
• Sponsors - Sponsors will have the ultimate responsibility of setting the vision and expected outcomes. They serve as the escalation point for risks. They are also accountable for ensuring that everyone understands what they’re doing, why they’re going to do it, and their role in the program.
• Business - It’s important to have representation from the business to understand their vision, needs, priorities and outcomes.
• IT - IT provides professional developers and testers to guide and adopt best practices so that the applications they deliver are more likely to stand the test of time from the perspective of maintainability, reliability and upgradability. 
• Extended Teams - Depending on the nuances of your project, you may have many teams to coordinate with, such as enterprise architecture, your service integration team, compliance, or security.

Key functions of Reuse governance are (1) Project Intake, (2) Reuse, and (3) Deployment.

• Project Intake: A good intake process helps to identify the appropriate technology for delivering the business solution. It also identifies the capabilities that are needed by a particular project. As capabilities are uncovered, the Pega COE can recommend existing reusable components and plan for new ones, to satisfy common needs across projects.
• Reuse: The Pega COE reviews all Pega reuse requests and determines fit and applicability for broader use. They build, or facilitate the build, of the reusable assets and then publish them for consumption. They also coordinate deployment and updates of reusable assets.
• Deployment: The Pega COE helps to establish consistent, repeatable processes for application deployment in a fashion that is compliant and coordinated. Dev Ops tools and procedures are critical for managing this effort, especially as the catalog of reusable components grows and they need to ensure that the latest versions of those components make it to production.

The following figure shows an example of an interactive model of where participants need to collaborate, coordinate and communicate to plan, design, deliver and maintain applications.

In the following image, click the + icons to learn more about the Pega COE target operating model:

To get the most out of your enterprise reuse program, you should establish the following processes and tools to assist with managing and storing assets, managing and tracking deployment of assets, and measuring usage to understand ROI and where you should be investing time and money.

• Lifecycle Management: Manage the lifecycle of reusable assets with a well-defined process and organizational role clarity. Consider whether a centralized or federated model is best suited for your organization.
• Reuse Catalog: Categorize, tag, and search assets in a central catalog that is administered by a governing body and which is accessible to distributed development teams in the organization.
• Deploy and Maintain: Manage deployments and track where Pega reusable assets are being used across your organization.
• Measure Value: Measure usage and ROI through dashboards and reports, by each reusable asset and by each consuming application.

In the following image, click the + icons to learn more about reuse governance tools and processes: