About Hugdrif
Hugdrif is an independent enterprise and solution architecture practice, founded and run by Petur Snaeland.
I have spent 25 years in enterprise business applications. What matters is not the number of years but the range: different industries, different products, different implementation programmes, and the same decisions seen from different roles.
As a product architect, I built a range of solutions that many organisations depend on, where no single customer's problem can be solved at the cost of everyone else's. In implementation programmes, I had to make development plans and releases hold to real customer timelines.
The accumulated experience and overview is what matters most. I have seen the same decisions from the vendor's side, the implementer's side and the customer's side, often on the same programme. It teaches one lesson above all others: the big picture has to be clear before implementation begins.
When building starts before that picture is clear, decisions nobody formally made get locked into the systems, and correcting course grows slower and more expensive the longer it runs. That is why the work starts with capability and process rather than with a product catalogue.
Hugdrif specializes in architecture and design. Hugdrif sells no software licences and does not take on overall responsibility for delivering or running the systems it advises on.
I can take on building specific parts of a solution where that helps.
Hugdrif is based in Iceland and works in both Icelandic and English.
How I work
Diagnosis before design
I do not propose a solution before I understand the problem. The first conversation is about working out what the question actually is, and it is often not the one on the agenda.
Map the current situation
I review existing documentation as a starting point, talk to the people who know the subject, and build a clear picture of what we are working on.
Take a position
You get a recommendation on what to do, not just an overview of your options. The reasoning is included, and the options I do not recommend.
Leave your team self-sufficient
Descriptions, decisions and rationale documented so your people carry them forward.
Where the experience lies
- Set the AI strategy for an international industry solution and led the work that followed
- Designed, built and put into production agents on Copilot Studio, with enterprise data and ERP through MCP
- Use of value-driven process analysis to find where AI agents can be applied, what can be automated and what should stay human operated
- Agent governance: agents as roles in organization chart, with defined authorization, accountability, RACI, etc.
- Designed and built a range of software products still on the market and in development, some for over a decade
- Rearchitected an industry solution to facilitate support for AI agents and automation
- Ownership of roadmap and backlog, from idea to value, running ALM in Azure DevOps
- Development of a process driven implementation methodology aligned with Microsoft Success by Design
- Reference architectures and metamodels, TOGAF-aligned mapping between business, information and solutions
- Established conceptual, logical and physical models for a solution, presented as an interactive reference portal
- Value-driven BPM; product manager and architect of a BPM product for a decade
- Extensive use of BPMN and UML, both for new designs and for reconstructing the design of legacy systems
- Dynamics 365 F&O and Customer Engagement, Dataverse, Power Platform, Azure and Copilot Studio
- Twenty years of direct engagement with Microsoft product teams
- Data protection and traceability in regulated sectors, GDPR requirements in the automotive industry
- Led distributed development and architecture teams across nine countries, collaborative design approach with the teams owning the outcome
On the name
On the name Hugdrif
Hugdrif is an Icelandic compound: hugur, mind or intent, and drif, drive. Icelandic uses drif for the drivetrain of a vehicle as much as for drive in the abstract, and both senses are meant. Ideas do not move an organisation on their own. Architecture provides the drivetrain between intent and delivery.