Organizations must adapt to today’s rapidly changing business environment, characterized by globalization, digitalization, global crises such as the war in Ukraine, supply chain dependencies or unpredictable events as for example COVID-19. This constant need to adapt highlights the crucial role of Digital Architects as guides for digital transformations.
But what is expected from Digital Architects? How should Digital Architects position themselves in the future? How is the Enterprise Architecture function influenced by an employee shortage in the IT sector? Will there be a change of the Enterprise Architecture function within organizations due to increasing functional requirements?
In practice, a well-implemented Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) enables companies to overcome the challenges towards a future-proof IT. The Capgemini Invent Digital Architecture Study 2023 examines the future of Digital Architects and their organizational function. Our key findings can be summarized into the following four outcome statements:
Digital Architects play an essential role in digitization and strategic coordination between business and IT:
Digital Architects are the drivers of digital transformation and therefore should be employed in all three types (Enterprise Architects, Domain Architects, and Solution Architects). This ensures that different strategic and operational requirements within an organization are covered. By enabling the business IT collaboration and provisioning of company-wide principles, Digital Architects contribute to an advanced and well-founded decision-making.
Digital Architects require a flexible skillset to link strategic and operational demands to IT systems:
The three different types of Digital Architects (Enterprise Architects, Domain Architects, and Solution Architects) need to constantly adapt their skillset in a fast-paced and changing environment. Digital Architects must be more business oriented, customer driven and show greater communication skills in the future. They need to understand the business process demands and translate between business and IT. Additionally, they should have knowledge about current architecture trends within their area of expertise.
Limited availability of Digital Architects has a major impact on companies in the development of their Enterprise Architecture:
In a fast-paced world, it is alarming that the average time taken to hire Digital Architects is three times longer than other IT personnel. If vacant positions cannot be filled with suitable applicants, this can result in technical debt as insufficiently skilled personnel may be forced to make important architectural decisions. Taking care of these decisions is important to prevent slowing down strategic and operational processes that align business requirements and IT systems. Therefore, companies must take action to upskill existing employees or to hire external Digital Architects, both leading to other challenges and benefits that must be considered.
Enterprise Architecture functions still show a tendency towards a centralized orientation, missing the opportunity to better support the business in a more flexible way:
The shift from central to federal Enterprise Architecture functions promotes their role as link between business and IT. Nevertheless, companies not transforming towards a federal governance could hinder strategic steering due to missing proximity to functional domains. Additionally, it is important to improve the proactive involvement of architects that belong to the EA function into digitization projects. It will be relevant to integrate EA more into strategic decision-making as data provided by Enterprise Architecture brings added value and provides a strong foundation for reliable decision-making.
Year published: 2023
Publication Title: CapGemini Digital Architecture Study