Salesforce Operations Governance and Architecture Framework (SOGAF): Applying the MIT‑CISR Enterprise Architecture to Salesforce Implementations

The Salesforce Operations Governance and Architecture Framework (SOGAF) applies the MIT‑CISR Enterprise Architecture framework to Salesforce implementations and programs.

Introduction

Defining a Common Entity (CoE) for a shared services center is challenging because the entity has many names:

“Center of Excellence”, “C4E”, “Professional Center”, “Expert Network”.

The terms “Design Authority” or “Platform Authority” are also used, causing confusion.

Different descriptions lead to different expectations, and unmet expectations cause frustration.

These issues are common when it is unclear whether the entity is a transformation, capability, or best‑practice center.

The Common Entity can play any number of these roles, adding further confusion:

After all, the Common Entity (CoE) does everything.

It is the closest thing to a transformation program and government, working across departments.

Sometimes it acts as a referee, ensuring both business and IT follow platform “rules”.

Sometimes it is a broker, reaching compromises between lines of business or markets.

From some LOB or market perspectives it is a resource that follows their priorities.

In SOGAF, the CoE’s mission revolves around four components and twenty activities, focusing on establishing the operating model’s purpose, vision, values, roles, processes and metrics.

Main Considerations

Establish sequences to help the organization learn a digital mindset.

Design, build, implement and support experience strategies and definitions.

Share group practices and create guidelines for standardization and reuse between similar groups.

Focus on continuous improvement through expertise and guidance to raise team capability.

Test new business models, processes and features to eliminate friction and identify new customer experiences.

Components

The diagram below describes four components (Project and Product Management, Platform and Product Support, Product Development and Platform Optimization, and Adoption and Operations) and their primary responsibilities.

Activities

The table below expands each component’s responsibilities into key activities.

CoE Component

Key Activities

CoE Mgmt & Salesforce PMO

Set CoE objectives, scope and plan, budget, scale and risk management.

Personnel/team management, onboarding and reporting.

Bus. Reqts, Value & Change Control

Requirement management, project scope governance meetings, change control committee meetings.

Stakeholder escalation.

Product Portfolio & Innovation

Establish innovation labs and centers, manage product portfolio and next‑year releases.

Build POCs/prototypes.

Security & Compliance/Regulations

Align with corporate security guidelines, implement security guardrails in plans.

Provide compliance training for staff and contractors.

Architecture Oversight

Organizational strategy, configuration and code quality, integration, data volume, archiving.

Backup and recovery, CD/CI supervision and expertise.

Design Authority

Establish, own and apply principles, standards, policies.

Ensure compliance and quality (UX, applications, data, security, reuse, scalability, sustainability).

Maintain flexibility to meet business needs and leverage new technologies, including AppExchange.

Product/Platform/CoE Standards

Define standards and SOPs for platform and application implementation, deployment and maintenance.

Provide repeatable methods.

Roles & Skills, Communications

Define roles and skills, training paths and certifications, toolkits.

Communicate new features, planned upgrades and service interruptions.

Internal Projects Consultancy & QA

Project QA methods (Agile, hybrid, waterfall) and tools for discovery, design, build, test, deployment.

Provide comments and expertise.

Shared Service for Product Development

Provide resources, teams, organization (including PO) and toolkits to deliver products in a factory model—individually or with SI.

Best Practice Community

Define, validate and disseminate processes, ways of working, lessons learned and solution configurations, whether mandatory or temporary.

Reusable Assets Mgmt

Collect, centralize, manage and circulate potential assets (solution configurations, code, integration patterns, documentation).

Environment Mgmt

Support all environments—from sandbox to production, marketing BU, etc.—monitor status and quality.

Data and metadata migration.

Release Mgmt & Integrations

Establish primary and secondary release schedules using tools.

Supervise version control, branching, frequency, components, integration.

Data Migration & Quality Mgmt

Oversee data models and metadata, update production data, quantity, quality, compliance and data reporting.

License & Usage Mgmt

Monitor Salesforce license usage and regularly update usage. Tool selection.

Deployment, Training, Adoption, NOE

Process/LoB/market end‑user deployment and training.

Application and business adoption. Center of Excellence network.

Administration – App, UI, Data, Platform

Operate applications – UI and usage (Lightning/Mobile), automation, standard and custom objects, reports and dashboards, Chatter, data.

Operate platform environment, archiving, backup and recovery. Monitor security, releases and roadmap (SF).

Access, Identity, Authorization

User provisioning, authorization and access (Profile & Permission set).

Identity and SSO, authentication, certificates, deactivation.

End User Support & Ticketing

Run ticketing process. Resolve Level 2 (admin) issues and coordinate with Level 3 (development) and/or Level 4 (SF) for support.

Source: https://architect.pub/sogaf-common-entity-framework-coe

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