I accept it, sometimes, frustratingly Enterprise Architecture does suck, and so do its people, who can be total control freaks, BTW!
To be honest, this is a very hard role to perform and even harder to understand. Enterprise Architecture is highly people dependent. If you have a great group of individuals on your EA team, it can be awesome. But if your team is made up of people whose agenda is “You will only implement what I approve”, then yep, it will suck.
In fact, a command and control style for implementing Enterprise Architecture is the worst way to go about it. Let’s start with humility. The EA team does not know everything. Every person the EA team interacts and collaborates with brings something valuable to the table. A good EA will know how to take what matters, leave what doesn’t, and craft a story that convinces people to do the right thing. My day to day job is to listen to people and guide them toward the best decisions.
This means the architect must excel at networking, influencing, and collaborating with others in the organization. The architect also needs an open mind, understanding that things change, requirements change, solutions change, people change, goals and outcomes change. That is the nature of the job.
A good enterprise architect builds strong working relationships with both decision makers and the people implementing those decisions, ensuring strategy turns into reality.
A bad enterprise architect, on the other hand, inserts stage gates into every process, demands that all designs go through their personal approval, and insists on a rigid, one track way of doing things.
So how the heck do we introduce governance? That is the tightrope walk we have to navigate. There is no magic pill.
I have some thoughts on ivory towers and Architecture Review Boards that I will write about another time.
What do you think of Enterprise Architects?