Published 16 January 2024 · Updated 11 October 2026
Enterprise architecture earns its seat at the table when it is pointed at the organisation’s hardest questions, not only at the technology estate. This is the argument for spending architecture capability on the business, and it is the difference between an IT function that is tolerated and one that is trusted with strategy.
Traditionally Enterprise Architects do the strategic planning for IT/IS/IDS: e.g. producing technology investment roadmaps, defining technology standards, mitigating technology complexity and risks.
These are still important services for an EA function.
However focusing only on what essentially amounts to enabling an efficient and useful IT shop is limiting the value that architecture and IT can provide.
EAs use business architecture to understand the business in order to answer IT questions.
But business architecture and architecture thinking can be deployed to answer business questions like:
– does our operating model need to change to better deliver our strategy? If so, what is the best new operating model?
– which business capabilities need investment and why? How do we get consensus about this across the organisation?
– what are the systemic/root causes of persistent organisational performance issues?
EAs and business architects are some of the privileged few to see and understand the whole organisation, end to end.
What’s my point?
Sure, use that privilege and practice to solve for IT, but many more organisations could be using their strategic architects to evolve, transform, adapt, and optimise faster and better; to turn strategy into reality faster.
What this means for executives
If your architects only ever answer technology questions, you are paying for a fraction of what they can do. The three things worth asking for: a business architecture view of how value actually flows to your customers; an investment case for the capabilities that carry the strategy; and a systemic read on why a persistent performance problem keeps coming back. None of those are IT questions, and architecture is one of the few functions positioned to answer all three.