Enterprise Architect: Role and Responsibilities

The enterprise architect’s role

The enterprise architect designs and governs the architecture of the organisation as a whole. They connect business strategy, capabilities, data, applications, technology platforms and security principles. Their work aims to ensure that technology decisions support long-term objectives.

Their usual responsibilities:

• Prepare architecture principles, which apply once the competent body has adopted them.
• Set technology standards with the CTO and the domain architects.
• Design target architectures with the teams concerned.
• Maintain the transformation roadmap.
• Connect each business need to the applications and technologies that serve it.

Work shared across several roles

An organisation’s architecture is shared across several specialised roles. Each covers a domain; the enterprise architect keeps the whole consistent. Without this coordination, two projects can introduce two applications for the same capability, or two standards for the same need.

In a small organisation, one person can hold several of these roles. In ArchiLU, one person can hold several profiles.

Chief Enterprise Architect

When the organisation has several architects, the Chief Enterprise Architect coordinates the business, data, application and technology architects. They prepare cross-domain options and principles for governance bodies. In reviews, they check the consistency of target architectures and delivered changes.

Business Architect

The business architect describes value streams, the operating model, the organisation and processes. They connect them to capabilities and strategy, then prepare changes with the business teams. The enterprise architect builds on this work to connect strategy to applications.

Domain architects

A domain architect defines the principles, standards and models of one domain: data, applications, integration or infrastructure.

The data architect, for example, describes data and its exchanges. They identify its uses and owners, then analyse the impact of changes. The CTO sets the technical direction and governs the integration of platforms and AI agents.

Solution Architect

The solution architect works at project or product level, within the organisation’s standards. They design the target, compare options, define integrations, select technologies and check technical feasibility.

They prepare the dossier and involve the right contributors. After delivery, they check what was delivered against the decision.

Security Architect

The security architect examines dependencies and risks. They define security requirements and questions, then prepare risk decisions and the test scope. They work with the enterprise architect to build security into every architecture domain.

Decision bodies

Architects prepare the options and dossiers. The architecture board, the investment committee and the executive committee decide, each within its mandate. An architecture approval commits the budget only if the body’s mandate provides for it.

In ArchiLU, the decision log keeps each decision with its body, its decision maker, its date, its outcome and its reason. The AI can prepare a decision or assess a waiver; only the members of the body decide. Its access and actions depend on its user’s permissions and on the governance mode.

In free mode, an architect can set up a foundation alone, and a decision body can have a single member.

The architect’s work in ArchiLU

The architect finds objects without an owner on their dashboard and designates owners, in bulk if needed. If your rules require it, the designated person accepts or declines, and only an accepted responsibility counts. Until someone accepts, the object remains without an owner.

For a change, the architect builds the architecture dossier with business and IT teams. The dossier can start from a request or be opened without one. In the portfolio, an application’s owner proposes its TIME class with a reason, and the enterprise architect holds it.