A Complete Career Guide for Enterprise Architects

Start with the Enterprise Architecture Profession

In the profession, we include all the domain architects – business architect, security architect, application architect, data architect, cloud architect, technology architect and enterprise architect.

Most of the enterprise architects I know fell into the job. Someone needed an architect. They were senior enough, creative enough, and respected enough.

• Do you want to be an architect?
• Do you want to guide effective change?
• Do you want to work through others?
• Do you want to keep moving on, even during the difficult implementation steps?

These questions are extremely serious. An architect’s value proposition lies in conducting excellent analysis. That value is achieved when someone else selects the best change. I find it frustrating. I find it wrenching to set everything up and then watch less informed people almost execute the vision. I must regularly remind myself that I have an advisory role. Despite not having direct control, I find it an enticing and challenging career path.

Starting with the profession, you have three questions:

1. Do I want to do what a great enterprise architect does?
2. What are my strengths and weaknesses in the aptitude and attitudes needed?
3. How strong am I on method and technique?

Know what an Enterprise Architect Should Do?

To summarize, it is simple. The architect guides effective change. The profession exists because finding the most effective change is hard. Our organizations are complex. The outcomes are complex. The source of a shortfall is hard to find. It takes skill, knowledge, and expertise to find the right change. Effective change ends with direct and control projects and implementation to complete the change.

Soft skills are more important than subject matter expertise, or experience implementing and operating systems.

Explore your Strengths and Weaknesses

I have a novel approach to hiring architects—I look for aptitude and attitude. I don’t start with seniority or subject matter expertise. Twenty years of not doing security architecture is not a steppingstone to being an excellent architect. Remember, the title architect should never be a measure of seniority.

Two of the best architects I have ever developed were fresh hires out of college. They were selected for aptitude and attitude. I was looking for someone with:

• Communication: This goes hand in hand with leadership and project management. As an enterprise architect, you’ll be communicating with multiple stakeholders. You need to manage expectations and guide people into making the right decisions.
• Leadership: An enterprise architect’s work cuts across departments, systems, personnel, applications, and technology. It brings together silos to make businesses more efficient, but to do this, you’ve got to bring many people with you through leadership.
• Team Player: You can’t enact change on your own. You need to bring people with you and often make compromises. The biggest problems don’t have cut-and-dry answers, and you’ll have to use your collaboration and negotiation skills to get the best result.
• Critical Thinking: Analytical skills are the basis of an enterprise architect’s work. Your job is to solve high-level problems, and you must approach this from an analytical standpoint. Topics of analysis will range from resiliency, agility, feasibility to IT Finance and cost optimization.
• Work Management: An enterprise architect does not have a straightforward linear job. It is easy to lose track of what you are doing when you are bringing silos together, working on a future and governing an implementation project. You need to manage your work.

Your Knowledge of Architecture Process, Method, and Technique

After you think about your aptitude and attitude, think about the basics of the profession. Our profession is based on a common approach—the TOGAF Standard. Extending that common approach are a myriad of general techniques. Example include a Cause & Effect Diagram (Ishikawa diagram) or roadmapping. Then there are domain specific techniques like capability-based planning or SABSA.