Enterprise architects are not born. They’re made.
This was a key learning I took away from the Open Group’s 23 annual Enterprise Architecture Practitioner’s Conference,
which took place in Toronto July 20-22. I only made it on the last day,
but among the highlights was a panel discussion about what it means to
be an enterprise architect (EA) and how they fit within the
organization (read Sandy Kemsley’s take
for more). The consensus was that very few firms really have a handle
on it, and even fewer have a straightforward career path to becoming
one.
“They’ll tell you when you’re an enterprise architect,” said Dave
Foote, a consultant to specializes in this area. “It’s when someone in
the business puts their arm around you and says you’re the enterprise
architect. At the same time you’ll want someone from the IT side saying
the same thing.”
This is because EAs, when they’re successful, become the locus of
activity for all that alignment between technologists and department
heads we’ve been talking about for the last 10 years. Like project
managers, they are appointed because no one else is creating the
organizational ethic that’s needed to make the most of data integration
or business transformation projects. Len Fehskens, an Open Group VP who
leads professional skills and capabilities programs for EAs, said many
HR professionals don’t really understand what the job entails. Within
the IT departments, however, EAs are seen as big earners.
“What you see sometimes is companies handing out these titles to
attract people,” he said. Not a great approach when you want to see the
overall performance of an enterprise to improve.
Much like the early days of CIOs, the industry is struggling to
define EAs just as the role is rapidly evolving. Fehskens said such
professionals may have started out by focusing on middleware, then
overall applications issues followed by business process optimization.
In some cases panelists said EAs report into the CIO, while others take
direction from the COO or even the CEO. Like the CIO (or even the IT
manager), the shift is from technical to strategic. So what sets them
apart?
“EAs can make a lot of other professionals very nervous about what
they do,” said Jason Uppal, chief architect, QRS Research and Services.
That’s because by helping develop a plan for managing information and
systems to be more responsive to the business, EAs are sometimes seen
as a threat to established powers in the company. “You need to develop
an almost priest-like sensibility that you don’t trample on other
people’s feelings.”
Foote agreed. “The best EAs I’ve known have all been great
communicators,” he said. “They set people at ease, making them
comfortable.” They also do a lot of work to translate the IT impacts on
business problems, and vice-versa.
Fehskens said he knew of one EA who got the ultimate compliment from a coworker. “She said, ‘You make me feel smart,’” he said.
Not a bad goal for IT professionals of all kinds, whether they one day become enterprise architects or not.
