Architecture Review Board
also called ARB, Design Authority
A forum that reviews significant designs against standards, risks and strategy before commitment.
At its best it is the place where an expensive mistake is caught cheaply, where a team benefits from cross-cutting knowledge it could not have had, and where a decision to depart from the standard is recorded rather than merely happening.
At its worst it is a monthly queue that reviews everything, arrives after the decisions are already made, and optimises for the reviewers' preferences rather than the delivery team's constraints.
What separates the two: a defined threshold so only significant designs are reviewed, engagement early enough to influence the design rather than veto it, published standards so teams can self-assess, decisions recorded as ADRs, and an explicit route to accept a deviation. Governance that cannot say yes conditionally will be routed around.