Architecting a Profession

There are many enterprise architects, but there´s no commonly accepted baseline of knowledge or standards to ensure consistent service. Formal professions often gradually evolve over time, but given enterprise architecture´s importance to business, this profession must mature quickly. Enterprise architecture is first and foremost an output of a process. It´s the “description of the structure and behavior of an organization´s processes, information flow, personnel, and organizational subunits, aligned with the organization´s core goals and strategic direction.” Although it need not include information systems, in real life, it almost always does. The modern enterprise architecture is “concerned with how an enterprise´s software systems support the business processes and goals of the enterprise.” Thus, an enterprise architect works at the seams where IT and information systems join with the work of their human counterparts. Unlike the business analyst of the past (or the business-process subject matter expert), assigned to figure out and describe a specific functional area or business process to an application development team, the enterprise architect knows how businesses operate and how decisions are made and applies this knowledge when modeling the enterprise architecture for a specific enterprise. This description then serves as a reference model for identifying and building new capabilities.