Enterprise Architect

Today’s Enterprise Architects (EAs) must do more than simply define and enforce technology standards. EAs who understand their role within an agile business focus on driving innovation and business outcomes. EAs who don’t adapt to this reality risk being marginalized to foundational tasks, which won’t drive business value.

KEY CHALLENGES:

• A focus on only some of the domains of EA. To be successful there must be a 360-degree view of the business, and the connected enterprise requires understanding of all those connection points. When the focus is only on one or two domains – technology is commonly the focus in this situation, there is an incomplete view, an incomplete understanding, and a myopic perspective that drives flawed decision making.

• Utilizing tools that are barriers rather than enablers. An EA tool must be domain agnostic and data driven. If the tool creates a focus on only one, or some, of the elements of EA, then it will not accurately reflect what is happening in the business today, nor the possible approaches to future evolutions. And unless it is driven by accurate and complete enterprise data, it is not only prone to mistakes, it is harder to use and maintain, inevitably resulting in a lack of engagement and commitment to the approach.

• The absence of ongoing, practical support. Organizations are continuously evolving and that means that EA must be capable of supporting that evolution – updating models, analyzing different options, and so on. For that to occur, the concept must be supported by executives and must invest in skilled, experienced, and certified enterprise architects. There must be an acknowledgement that EA will require time and effort from all business areas and that it won’t simply be a ‘one and done’ exercise. It must bean integral, and essential, part of how business gets done moving forward.