The Invisible Architect: Why Enterprise Architecture Struggles to Make an Impact

In the realm of business strategy, the concept of a sales funnel is well-known. To sell a product, you need to guide potential customers through stages of awareness, interest, desire, and ultimately, purchase. Enterprise Architecture (EA) faces a similar challenge. We’re not selling cars, but rather, a vision of a more efficient, resilient, and innovative organization.

The Problem: A Lack of Visibility

Unfortunately, many organizations still struggle to recognize the true value of EA. As the following chart illustrates, a significant portion of companies either underestimate or completely overlook the role of EA:

Around one third of the companies considers Enterprise Architecture as really value adding, another third views them as some kind of necessary evil and the final third is not even aware that Enterprise Architecture exists.

This lack of visibility has far-reaching consequences. When EA is unknown or undervalued (all effects statistically significant with p<0.05):

Business Alignment Suffers: The business architecture is less mature and EA is less likely to deliver sustainable business solutions.

Technical Debt Piles Up: The rate of application decommissioning is lower, fewer microservices are established and there is a worse connection between EA and solution architecture.

Compliance Risks Rise: Even if EA is doing a great job: No one cares. Benefits are seldom monitored, guidelines are not followed and overall the architecture compliance in lower.

How to Make EA Visible

To overcome these challenges and elevate the profile of EA, consider these steps:

• Translate Technical Jargon into Business Value: Focus on Outcomes, Not Artifacts: Instead of dwelling on diagrams and blueprints with lines and boxes, emphasize the tangible benefits of EA, such as cost savings, improved performance, and reduced risk. Use Business Artifacts. Use whatever language and “artifact” the business stakeholders are use to: a business case, template a P&L or their roadmap.
• Tell jokes – not that you are funny: Don’t tell people that you are funny. Tell them a joke. Don’t tell them that EA can solve problems. Solve a problem that actually matters for the company.
• Get an ambassador: Select the problem to solve so that the owner of this problem becomes your ambassador, the key salesperson for the power of EA. It’s far easier if a peer tells other stakeholders that EA is great rather than the Chief Architect trying the same.

Let’s change the narrative. Let’s make Enterprise Architecture visible.