How to become an enterprise architect? – some observations…

Praba Siva has written a useful and interesting post that describes a route map to becoming an enterprise architect.  I have written a couple of blogs that are related to this - What does a technical architect do next? and What does a chief architect do next?.

My concern about Praba’s post is that it is very IT focused and within that very development focused.  Below, I make some suggestions for some enhancements to the roadmap that I think it will encourage people from other backgrounds to enter the professional and provide very valuable contributions.

Specifically, in a well balanced enterprise architecture team, I believe there must be people who have come from a business background – they provide a grounding in reality, can communicate effectively with the business, and are more likely to be seen to be committed to the long term future of the business.  Therefore, any route map should provide a business entry point.

The second additional entry point that I would like to see is from an information or data perspective.  My experience tells me that many architecture teams are weak when it comes to data, content, and information management.  The result being data duplication, poor performing databases, work executed in code when it would be better done in the database.

Another area where architecture teams are often weak is infrastructure which is well covered by the roadmap.  I would like to see an entry point for infrastructure specialists as well.

My final observation builds on my first one.  Although an enterprise architect may not come from a business background, I believe that they must get out there and experience the reality of the business.

Comments

[Vishal]

I think you are right to be a successful ea you need to have combination of both IT & Business Skills. Both of them required as IT has now become the core part of the business process/activity.