Architecture contracts sound like an internal mechanism — a way for an org to hold itself to its own commitments. But I keep thinking about the other end. A community organisation we’ve agreed to support doesn’t receive what was promised. The governance model identifies who reviews the work, who signs off compliance, who tracks whether the implementation matched the architecture. That chain matters. But it needs to reach further than the internal review process — it needs to connect to the actual outcome for the people we said we’d help.
Phase G governance is where architecture stops being a document and becomes something real organisations depend on. The Implementation Governance and Architecture Contracts docs lay out the compliance review structure (full docs here: https://cloud.nzrtnetwork.com/nextcloud/index.php/s/DnfsPDH2nx3QBSz and https://cloud.nzrtnetwork.com/nextcloud/index.php/s/Epjk662GKRqt6iR). What I want those reviews to measure is not just technical conformance — but whether the communities we committed to actually received what was scoped. Architecture contracts are accountability instruments. If they only track against internal architecture decisions, they’re missing half their purpose.
In a volunteer org, this matters more than usual. There’s no employment structure to enforce accountability through. The contracts and governance processes are often the only formal mechanism we have. Worth making sure they point outward, not just inward.
