Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture

Chapter 3. Shared Alignment

The heart of an effective enterprise architecture strategy is creating shared alignment for architecture decisions. In Chapter 2, you learned that creating shared alignment means that all impacted stakeholders are aligned to adhere with an architecture decision, even if they don’t necessarily agree with that decision or would have preferred an alternative. You also learned that a culture of trust is foundational to achieve alignment. In this chapter, you’ll go deeper to better understand mechanisms that you can use to create shared alignment and the culture of trust that is a prerequisite for it.

Did you know that enterprise architecture as a function is uniquely positioned to bring a group of individual stakeholders together with a common goal? It is unique because enterprise architecture is concerned with a holistic perspective and solving problems with the whole company in mind. This is different from organizational functions like engineering, business development, and cybersecurity. Whereas these functions do work toward the company’s common goal, such as increasing business revenue, each function tends to focus on solving its own problems first. For example, cybersecurity may seek additional protections and risk mitigations, while engineering may seek to modernize, and business development may seek to penetrate new markets. Only enterprise architecture is positioned to look across all of these functional areas to define the north star as a modernization ...