Building an Enterprise Architecture Practice

Enterprise architecture is similar to electricity in more ways than one. Like electricity, architecture is often out of sight, out of mind. That is until it stops working, at which point it becomes painfully obvious that something integral is missing.

Architecture bears another similarity to electricity: throughout history, plenty of people lived their lives without it. I would have loved to have witnessed some of the early-era electricians trying to “sell” homeowners on the concept of electrification. While the electricians knew how useful electricity was, the homeowners probably rebutted that they got along “just fine” without electricity for many years, so why fork out the hard-earned cash for this newfangled fad called electricity? In many ways, organizations without an enterprise architecture practice have a similar mindset today.

In this article, I’ll articulate the key value proposition of enterprise architecture and enumerate several of my own “lessons learned” during the instantiation of…