How Enterprise Architects Are Redefining Their Roles in a Cloud-first World

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Enterprise architects, according to the dictionary, are the people responsible for translating organisation's strategic goals into a working solution. That solution can comprise a business model, organizational structure, supporting applications and infrastructure. As they also map out the different data streams that come out of the operations of the organization, they have an important role in designing these for applying analytics. Without their input, it will be almost impossible to operationalise analytical models, and therefore to use them to support organisational decision-making. Choosing the right platform can make a huge difference to be able to develop models, and then deploy them.[1]

However, as the world moves to cloud-first, the role of enterprise architects is inevitably changing.

Stakeholders and roles

Mathias Coopmans is an enterprise architect working in SAS. I recently shared with him my opinion that everyone was a stakeholder in architecture, including business units and IT. The architecture has to support delivery of a digital strategy that requires cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and openness to respond to rapidly-changing customer demands. Stakeholders also want stability and security from the architecture. Mathias agreed.

“I think that what is important today is agility in enterprise architecture. Traditionally developing architecture has been a long process of hard work with lots of strategic thinking and abstract outcomes. Today, though, stakeholders are not always prepared to wait, and I think that’s a real challenge for enterprise architects. They need to shorten the processes, but still come up with answers that will work in the long term. Doing the work thoroughly, but still with an eye to the long term, may sound like a challenge, but perhaps the answer lies in working more iteratively.”

There is therefore a need for more agility, but Mathias is clear that the scope of enterprise architecture has not changed in this new cloud-first era.

"The role of architects in an organisation is still to set an enterprise architecture out, including all the stakeholders in its development. This includes a clear vision of how all the applications and processes will be integrated. The difference is in how you deliver the scope through the cloud, and in a more agile way—and, as I said before, more iteratively.”

However, we agreed that there has been a distinct change in the role of enterprise architects, away from basic IT and administrative activities, towards management work. Examples of this new work include defining new business models, and overseeing governance rules and standards. Enterprise architects also have a good overview of the organisation. This means they are ideally placed to mediate between stakeholders, and in particular between IT and business. Mathias comments that they also translate the business strategy into more concrete terms.

“This mediator role has been around for a long time, but it's not just between groups. Architects also need to translate the business strategy into tangible terms. They have to go from a very abstract level to setting up the building blocks of the architecture across the enterprise.”

Changing skills

Have the changing roles changed the skills required of enterprise architects? There is no question that agility is crucial, but are there other changes too? Surprisingly, Mathias thinks that the real change is in communication methods and styles.

“I think what is newer is that enterprise architects have to deal with more people, and perhaps the communication style has changed over time. However, a good enterprise architect is a change agent, and loves to change, so I'm not too worried about how they might adapt.”

However, he suggests that there is another and more crucial skill: environmental scanning.

“I think it is important for enterprise architects to have a finger on the pulse, as it were, and be able to anticipate changes in communication style, or changes outside the organization as well as inside the organisation, and adapt to those. I think this is a change from the days where enterprise architects perhaps worked much more systematically to gather requirements through interviews with stakeholders. There are several frameworks for enterprise architecture, and some of those are becoming a bit dated. Now, as an enterprise architect, you have to be pragmatic in your style and focus on getting things done To help in the execution of the Enterprise Architecture there are agile frameworks that are iterative by design, and organisations who manage to align both are the most succesful in the execution.”

I think this term ‘change agent’ is crucial in a cloud-first world. It recognises the reality of the changing skills needed of architects. These include a reduced need for technical knowledge, but better knowledge of options and ability to sense the environment, as well as agility. In their role as change agents, the future is bright for enterprise architects in a cloud-first world.

[1] https://blogs.sas.com/content/sascom/2017/03/03/show-analytics-architecture/