What drives enterprise architecture in the coming months? Read our top trends and what you can do to stay ahead.

7 Key Trends in Enterprise Architecture

Trend 1: Enterprise Architect as the influencer

Persuade and facilitate, rather than enforce and govern Once upon a time, enterprise architecture practices typically focused on applications and technologies and how they supported business processes or capabilities. They also prioritized setting technologies standards and enforcing their use – all of this was done to reduce technical debt and simplify application portfolios in the hope of enabling business agility. However, in the face of rapidly changing technologies and business environments, the role of the enterprise architect has necessarily had to adapt. Digitalization, cloud technologies and API-led service orientation have increased the complexity of systems and decreased the need to manage technical debt and duplication. Simultaneously, the need for speed and adaptability, often involving adopting Agile working practices, has caused a collective realization that traditionally governance processes are too slow and rigid, inhibiting the autonomy required for product teams to innovate at speed to deliver business value. Top-down, centralized decision-making just doesn’t cut it. However, the fundamental need for alignment around key business initiatives and the need to ensure the best use of available resources for creating targeted business outcomes has

Nick Reed Chief Strategy Officer

Follow me on Linkedin

“The nature of the enterprise architect’s role has changed and continues to change significantly to more of an influencer and enabler rather than a decision maker or enforcer.”

Dan Belville Senior Pre-Sales Consultant

Follow me on Linkedin

“When organizations identify cost savings through rationalization efforts, it could, in some cases, be used as investment sources for transformational strategies.”

Jeeps Rekhi Customer Success Consultant

Follow me on Linkedin

“With its holistic perspective and articulation of how different parts of an enterprise link together, enterprise architecture provides answers to the sustainability actions you need to undertake and prioritize.”

Marc Lankhorst Managing Consultant

Follow me on Linkedin

"It isn’t about putting up roadblocks and checkpoints that slow down agile teams; rather, it provides signposts and guardrails to keep them moving in the right direction."

About Bizzdesign

We believe that success should not be a matter of hope but that it should be by design. With our trusted global SaaS Enterprise Architecture platform, we help architects and executives see a complete multi-dimensional picture, find and design the right path, and execute with confidence to their targeted future.

For more information, visit bizzdesign.com or Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Industry-expert consulting and customer success

Industry-recognized software

Responsive, customer-success led sales support

Global Partner program

Voice of the industry

not gone away. In fact, recent years have confirmed the value of enterprise architects as key change enablers, with demand for enterprise architecture skills at an all-time high. But the nature of the enterprise architect’s role has changed and continues to change significantly to more of an influencer and enabler rather than a decision maker or enforcer. Enterprise architects are increasingly working to create an environment that supports innovation and experimentation, providing freedom and autonomy to teams to create new digital products and capabilities while providing the right information and insights to help those teams align with targeted business goals and outcomes, and provide transparency and traceability for those decisions. For example, where once an architecture review board (ARB) might review a solution and require a re-design to use standard technologies, now product teams are more likely to ‘self-serve’ with a streamlined, automated governance process, enabling them to choose to use pre-approved solution design patterns that align with key architecture principles, enable key business capabilities, embed security controls and comply with regulatory requirements. This means the role of the enterprise architect is becoming more strategic, collaborative and focused on driving business value through providing key building blocks and insights that deliver tangible value for a wide range of stakeholders.

Focus on stakeholder value: Engaging with a broad range of stakeholders to understand their needs and how EA can add value for them. Ensure enterprise architecture adoption: Focus on producing compelling, engaging and consumable EA services that stakeholders can use on a self-service basis, that help them make optimal decisions. Multiply the impact of enterprise architecture: Adopt a Product mindset, and seek to productize enterprise architecture expertise and best practice into assets that less expert stakeholders can use in their roles.

Steps you can take

• • •

Trend 2: Sustainability

Use architecture to act on critical sustainability drivers Action on climate change is slowly gathering pace, but carbon emissions are only a small piece of the much wider sustainability agenda. The SASB Materiality Map shows the wide range of topics that organizations are expected to consider. The speed with which these concerns can become board-level issues was amply demonstrated in 2020 when forced labor in Uighur made news headlines and compelled industries such as fashion to examine and share their supply chains. Source Overview of issues considered in the SASB Materiality Map

The drive for transparency isn’t new but is getting renewed pressure from many stakeholders – from financial markets and investors to charities and regulators. What’s new is that ‘greenwashing’ is no longer tolerated, and companies are expected to take action. The question is what actions to take and how to prioritize them. With its holistic perspective and articulation of how different parts of an enterprise link together, enterprise architecture is uniquely well-placed to provide answers. You may need to trace the provenance of your raw materials through your operations, assess potential human rights violations in your supply chain, or record Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions – where Scope 3 refers to emissions in your value chain outside your organization. Having documented this information against your architecture, you’ll need to present this evidence in readily understandable dashboards that are continuously updated as new data comes in. You won’t be doing this alone – you need a solution that enables others to submit the data into your models and regularly verify their data's accuracy.  Your architecture is the framework for defining how sustainability affects your organization, determining the response, and capturing progress and performance.

Impact analysis: Understand where and how sustainability impacts your organization. Apply sustainability policies and principles to your architecture to formulate the size and scope of impacts. Make sustainability tangible and actionable: Move quickly past the straplines (e.g., ‘net zero’) and start mapping out which parts of your organization need to change (e.g., identify the biggest emissions and quick wins). Engage experts who can inform your models and insights: A range of stakeholders can share their understanding of the organization and provide data. You need to identify them and start the collaboration.

• • •

As an enterprise architect, you can help define what your organization needs to do in the sustainability agenda by:

Steps you can take

Use AI to optimize your current state architecture documentation: This improves data quality while architectures continuously change and allows enterprise architects to focus on future state design and support for decision-makers. Intensify collaboration: Engage with other architects and specialists to design AI-friendly architectures that support business goals and -outcomes. Is your enterprise architecture wired for implementing AI into your business- and operating models? Make enterprise architecture accessible: Practically leverage AI to make enterprise architecture more accessible to other architects. For example, check out Bizzdesign’s ML-driven Relation Recommender for smarter and easier modeling and to improve enterprise architecture models.

• • •

Steps you can take

Simon Cross Principal Consultant in Security

Follow me on Linkedin

“Real-time compliance no longer needs to be a nirvana state out of reach for enterprises. It's becoming a target state for organizations using enterprise architecture as a driving force and with a vision of being data-driven and proactive in their posture management.”

They're all integrated to drive the output. Furthermore, compliance evidence can be collected in real-time by synchronizing enterprise architecture' design-time activities' with the continuous control monitoring of 'run-time activity.' Regulators benefit from this system because they have rapid access to the data they need in a consumable and complete format. More importantly, it benefits the enterprise in cost savings, proactive risk management and consistency in system design. This multi-layered system can be realized in bite-sized chunks. (Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon) Bizzdesign's Compliance Meta-model

Trend 4: Real-time compliance

Enterprise architecture as the driving force for compliance automation Real-time compliance or compliance automation no longer needs to be a nirvana state that the enterprise dreams of achieving – it's becoming the target state of compliance for organizations with a vision of being data-driven and proactive in their posture management. Imagine the power of providing enterprises' regulators and auditors access to a portal that provides compliance status and shows how regulatory compliance is achieved. These portals may: • Report on the scope of where controls are relevant, and the compliance status of the enterprise • Provide models detailing the design of each control • Provide access to real-time evidence describing control effectiveness With the click of a button, interested parties can view the high-level position and zoom in on areas of concern. They could systematically understand areas of weakness and view what work is done to address them. Sitting behind the system's front end is an enterprise architecture-driven operating model, workflow, patterns, and model repository.

Begin with good data governance: Ownership and accountability for the compliance data ensure that models are created, maintained and accurate Leverage Bizzdesign’s continuous compliance meta model: The model creates traceability from the exam question, through the working out (design), to the answers (evidence)  Realize tangible benefits: Automated maintenance of a high-quality compliance model and reduction of effort to attest compliance are just some of the benefits

• • •

Steps you can take

Jan Jaap Elskamp Senior Customer Success Manager

Follow me on Linkedin

“Capability-based Planning takes a holistic view and identifies potential capability gaps preventing the business from achieving their goals.”

Capability-based Planning takes a holistic view and identifies potential capability gaps preventing the business from achieving their goals. Capabilities encompass people, processes and systems that come together to realize specific functions. Enterprise architecture will therefore play a critical role in helping organizations flourish during the economic downturn by improving their capabilities because it gives valuable insights into the inner workings of the business. (Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon) apability-based Planning gives you complete visibility enabling better decision-making

Trend 5: Capability-based Planning

Survive and thrive during an economic downturn Although many businesses tend to get hit hard by an economic recession, it also offers many opportunities for those that can adapt quickly. A Harvard Business Review study (Source) tracked 4700 companies during three global recessions of 1980, 1990 and 2000. They found that 9% of the sample didn’t simply recover in the three years after the recession, but they flourished and outperformed competitors by at least 10% in sales growth and profit. The answer seems to be in the way that these companies prepared and made contingency plans for different alternative scenarios. Organizations need to have the ability to make the right investment decisions. Especially during an economic downturn, companies can’t afford to waste limited resources on wrong investment decisions. Investments need to be made in activities that achieve business goals, for example, to save costs by reducing expenditure of the inventory. Organizations need to understand what needs to change. Capability-based Planning plays a critical role because it provides a structured approach to analyze and measure the effectiveness of change investments.

Start! Create a draft capability map: The map focuses on a chosen scope. Validate this with stakeholders and subject matter experts. An industry capability model may also be available, which you can tailor and learn from. Perform an initial assessment: The assessment should focus on the strategic importancy of the capabilities. For instance, use a typical classification scheme of commodity vs. differentiating, or relate these capabilities to specific strategic goals of your enterprise. Relate the analyzed capabilities tochange initiatives: For example, these may focus on projects and programs and agile value streams that impact these capabilities.

• • •

Steps you can take

Regulators to have compliance information in a consumable and complete format – at the touch of a button

Prioritize business value: Analyze the enterprise architecture and identify which business goals are supported by specific capabilities, teams, business processes, software features, or infrastructure. Prioritize change initiatives based on their impact on these aspects. Coordinate work: Understanding dependencies supports planning and collaborating with others. Simply put, if feature A depends on feature B, build feature B first (or in parallel). Designing room for change: An agile enterprise architecture addresses the impact of potential changes and provides direction and guardrails (while avoiding speedbumps), helping your agile teams to stay focused on business priorities.

• • •

Steps you can take

Trend 7: Agility in practice

7 Key Trends in
Enterprise Architecture bizzdesign

Enterprise Architecture brings opportunities in a world filled with change We’ve all experienced many changes in our environments in the last year. The effects of the Covid pandemic remained with us, and the global recession hit hard in some industries. Climate change is now at the top of CIOs' agendas as they look at ways to achieve net-zero goals and reduce the organization’s carbon footprint. Yet, in the face of change, enterprise architecture always brings opportunities. This is evident in Bizzdesign’s enterprise architecture trends list. In this guide, we explore the top trends in enterprise architecture in light of all the changes in the world. We also give you steps to operationalize the lessons you’ve learned. As an architect, you’re a powerful influencer in enforcing change. We support you in this! We believe in developing meaningful software. Our software gives you a platform to work with purpose and a roadmap that facilitates change. The insights you create with Bizzdesign Horizzon have the power to inspire and make a difference. Enjoy reading about the trends we think will impact your enterprise architecture practice this year. Lead the change! Peter Matthijssen Chief Product Officer at Bizzdesign LinkedIn

Foreword

Trend 2

Sustainability: Use architecture to action critical sustainability drivers

Trend 1

Enterprise Architect as the influencer: Persuade and facilitate – don’t enforce and govern

Trend 3

Artificial Intelligence: On the verge of intelligent enterprise architectures

Trend 4

Real-time compliance: Automate compliance with enterprise architecture

Trend 5

Capability-based Planning: Survive and thrive in an economic downturn

Trend 6

Rationalization and cost savings: Invest in new transformational opportunities

Trend 7

Agility in practice: Changing the enterprise by design brings agility

Foreword

About Bizzdesign

bizzdesign.com

Twitter

Facebook

The enterprise architect is becoming more strategic, collaborative and focused on driving business value

Social and environmental drivers are impacting your business in poorly understood ways, which necessitates getting clarity quickly

Execute the organization’s strategy and make the right investments decisions with Capability-based Planning

Trend 6: Rationalization and cost savings

Invest in new transformational opportunities The Corona pandemic, climate change, or technological changes such as digitization and AI pressure organizations to transform. Organizations are likely to establish rationalization and cost-saving strategies alongside other transformational strategies – they’ll take the outcomes from one strategy to aid in the investment of another. Begin by identifying the current state. This can include catalogs of existing elements usually represented as applications, technologies, and business context that can be analyzed. These catalogs are typically managed in a continuum (i.e., in the enterprise architecture repository) with analysis capabilities. The analysis relies on various metadata about the catalogs with relationships between elements to help narrow down a set of candidates that represent the opportunities of the effort. Use standard approaches and language to express the opportunity outcomes to stakeholders who need to approve plans. Examples of standard approaches include TIME Analysis: T = Tolerate; I = Invest; M = Migrate; and E = Eliminate.

Each of these standard approaches also needs to include cost metrics. For example, the current total cost of ownership as opposed to the target and the margins. This should also include transformation one-time as well as ongoing costs and the margins by moving ahead with the opportunity. When possible, it’s also good to show where these rationalization efforts contribute to these highest-level strategic metrics of the organization. (Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon) Bizzdesign's Compliance Meta-model

Identify the current state: Establish catalogs of existing elements usually represented as applications, technologies and business context that can be analyzed. The analysis relies on various metadata about the catalogs with relationships between elements to help narrow down a set of candidates that represent opportunities. Design and execute roadmaps: Create transformational plans in the form of target state architectures that connect to rationalization opportunities.Include roadmaps that represent the timing of actionable results. Execute these roadmaps to make an impact, such as to achieve cost savings or make new investments in transformational opportunities. Check out Bizzdesign’s out-of-the-box APM+ solution, which covers all the phases of application rationalization: capture, analyze, assess and make decisions on application transformation PLUS you get support for future state architecture design.

• • •

Steps you can take

Matthijs Scholten Product & Innovation Manager

Follow me on Linkedin

“For enterprise architects, AI will become a more practical technology enabling smarter design practices.”

Trend 3: Artificial Intelligence

On the verge of intelligent enterprise architectures In late 2022, ChatGPT unleashed a new wave of Artificial Intelligence to the public. LinkedIn posts of people sharing their ChatGPT examples were widespread – having the AI tool drafts all kinds of content, from haikus to work reports. Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, also cited: “By 2029, AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence.” (Source) AI is now a publicly accessible technology that’s rapidly approaching human intelligence levels. For enterprise architects, AI will become a more practical technology enabling smarter design practices. Complementary, enterprise architects need to design architectures that support the successful application of AI to achieve business outcomes. So what should enterprise architects consider doing under the rising influence of AI?

AI is going mainstream and the time is now for Enterprise Architects to boost your impact

Agile organizations execute change initiatives at speed

Enterprise architecture identifies rationalization opportunities that could fund transformational strategies

It is not uncommon for these teams to work in silos or conduct work that doesn’t align with the organization’s strategy. Coordination is needed, and that is what modern Enterprise Architecture offers. It isn’t about putting up roadblocks and checkpoints that slow down agile teams; rather, it provides signposts and guardrails to keep them moving in the right direction. (Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon) Strategy-on-a-page. Providing context for change architecture

Changing the enterprise by design brings agility In recent years, many organizations have been challenged by disruptive events and developments, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic and war to supply change disruptions, labor shortages, and rapidly rising costs. To adapt to these new realities, enterprises urgently needed to change their operations in many areas. Changes may include scaling down (or up) certain operations, enabling a digital workforce, mending broken supply chains, fixing logistical problems, or dealing with resource scarcity. In the past, Enterprise Architecture was mainly concerned with carefully planning large-scale changes to the IT estate of the enterprise, as well as focused on reducing cost and risk. In contrast, the agile movement focuses on speed while responding to change. Enterprise Architecture was perceived as ‘slow’ and ‘cautious’, while agile is ‘fast’ and ‘confident’. But times have changed, and Enterprise Architecture has transformed. Changing the enterprise by design brings agility. As a result, change initiatives can now be successfully executed at speed. How is this done? Large enterprises may have hundreds of agile teams working on their solution features, unaware of the bigger picture.

“In the face of change, enterprise architecture always brings opportunities – this is evident in Bizzdesign's enterprise architecture trends list. Knowing the future trends of enterprise architecture will give you a head-start in facilitating change.”