Purpose & Mission

To establish global pre-sales architecture standards and processes, the early-stage design and validation of client solutions that enable confident, fast, and high-quality pre-sales.
The goal is to make pre-sales architecture a shared responsibility across senior technical staff and a recognised growth path for consultants.

To create a structured, collaborative, and scalable approach to pre-architecture that:

Improves how we engage with clients in early solution design
Develops repeatable methods, processes, and reusable assets (so pre-sales is repeatable, lower effort, more accurate)
Connects pre-sales architects across all regions into one active group.

Core difference vs the current model

Pre-sales architecture is part of seniority, not a favour
Starting at Lead Consultant, contributing to pre-sales architecture and client pre-sales work is an expected element of seniority. Establish that participation in pre-architecture is a requirement for progression from Lead to higher levels.
Pre-sales architecture is structured and measurable
Logged in Ruddr, planned, and visible to leadership — not ad-hoc extra effort. Always with a code.
Consistency
Standardisation of diagramming, notation, and architectural patterns ensures every pre-sales engagement looks and feels professional, similar, regardless of region.
Group
The pre-sales architecture group connects experts globally, sharing learnings, reusable content, and proven approaches.

Key Responsibilities of the Pre-Sales Architecture Lead

1. Build, Lead, and Coordinate the Global Pre-Sales Architecture group

Bring together architects from the Americas, EMEA, and the UK under one shared working model
Run recurring syncs to review new opportunities, lessons learned, and reusable patterns
Engage consultants across levels to contribute to pre-sales activities
Define how to enforce the structure and have people engaged (so everyone is participating, not necessarily one person doing all the pre-sales work)
- ie, each pre-sales architect can step out from the billable engagement to do pre-sales work. To be coordinated with some advance with the PM/Delivery lead

2. Define and Roll Out a Standard Pre-Sales Architecture Process

(Primary objective for the first 3 months)

Design and document a standard pre-sales architecture process covering
- Opportunity qualification, scoping, and estimation
- Client discovery and validation steps
- Deliverable standards and handoffs to Sales or Delivery
Create standard templates for proposals, discovery notes, and architecture outlines.
Pilot the process with selected sales teams and refine based on outcomes
Define and enforce common diagramming and notation standards ( ie, standardised visual style, icons, and layer structure for solution diagrams)
Build and maintain a registry of common architecture patterns — covering reference architectures, reusable blocks (e.g., streaming pipeline, AI model deployment), and best practices
Maintain a registry of projects and make the pre-sales group aware of all we’ve built
Ensure that every pre-sales architecture engagement contributes back to this registry for future reuse
Provide lightweight training and guidance for consistent visual communication across teams and proposals.
Process of handovers to other pre-sales architects so they can resume the conversations with clients

4. Engagement Management

Coordinate and assign pre-sales architecture support across the group (trackable via Ruddr codes).
Provide transparency between Sales, Delivery, and Architecture on who is involved in each opportunity.

5. Training

Organises internal enablement sessions on:
- Leading a pre-sales discovery
- Translating technical concepts into business value
- Creating clear, standardised solution diagrams and visuals

6. Recognition and Incentives

Build a recognition mechanism (ie, Pre-Sales Architecture Kudos or community leaderboard).
Collaborate with HR and leadership to ensure pre-sales architecture work is visible in performance reviews.
Highlight standout contributions to the architecture registry or key deal wins.

7. Provide quarterly updates to leadership

Number of opportunities supported and regions covered,
Adoption of standard templates and diagramming styles,
Registry growth (number of reusable assets and patterns),
Wins and lessons learned
Identify blockers (e.g., lack of available time or unclear process) and propose mitigations.

8. Identify projects that overrun

Find the reasons for the overrun, and if connected to pre-sales, improve the process

Time Allocation for the Pre-sales Architecture Lead

70–80% billable
20–30% non-billable to allow Leadership work (Initially 50% and then lower after it is established)

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