Why Does a Company Need IT Enterprise Architecture?

 

Why Does a Company Need IT Enterprise Architecture (EA)?

A simple analogy…

When I present to companies about “Why does a company need an IT Enterprise Architecture team?”, I like to start with the following picture.

I pose the question “Does this work?” to the audience…

which of course elicits many responses.

The typical responses are as follows:

— Yes it works but it’s dangerous because of fire/electrocution (security), it probably has poor reliability (downtime), unclear how many more connections it can handle or needs to handle (scalability/reliability), who actually knows what’s hidden behind the wall (end to end architecture) and finally who is allowed to plug into this outlet (governance).

I like this as the next slide in the presentation…

this is of course an outcome that could occur!

For a company, IT Enterprise Architecture has responsibility for many of these areas — extensibility, governance, scalability, maintainability, usability, availability and security (remember the IT -ilities that we used to talk about?).

And my simple argument for having IT Enterprise Architecture is “If IT Enterprise Architecture is not answering questions about scalability, reliability and usability, then who is?” and typically the answer is “no one”.

In the example above, I think the most interesting question to delve into is “what’s behind the wall that we can’t see?”. One of the most enjoyable responsibilities of IT Enterprise Architecture is to make visible that which is not easily seen. Imagine if, behind the wall, there was a very low gauge wire instead of what you would typically find in the US — something like 12/2 romex which has very specific ratings in terms of amperage, distance, etc. Exceed those ratings and the fuse will blow… or worse.

Enterprise Architecture would “look behind the wall” and understand the underlying architecture including the wiring, the fuse panel and breaker associated with the circuit → “This is what we can safely support with the circuit”. If the user said “Well I need to charge my new Tesla”, then Enterprise Architecture would factor that requirement into a design/architecture that would support car charging.

If you are looking for a humorous but relatable analogy as to why IT Enterprise Architecture is needed, try this one out!

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  1. anjani02October 21, 2025 at 9:34 PM

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