Enterprise Architect Interview Questions: How to Answer Like a Chief Architect

Are you looking for? Enterprise architect. Interview questions? If so, this video is for you. Hi, my name is Mike Gibbs. I've spent about 25 years as the chief architect and an enterprise architect. And in today's video, I'm going to give you five interview questions that are extremely common for enterprise architect interviews. And I'm going to give you the answers that I use, in these types of interviews that I recommend using in an enterprise architect interviews. Now, the first question that I'll ask today would be, how do you align your enterprise architecture with business strategy? Now, the way I would answer it would be something like this. I would say my first priority is to ensure that the enterprise architecture serve the business goals. Now that process begins with understanding the business strategy in detail. Now that means I'll be working closely with your CEO, your CFO, your chief operating officer, your chief information officer, and business unit leaders, because I'll need to understand your strategic growth initiatives, your products and services, marketing position, any kind of competitive pressures that your organization faces, any regulatory constraints and their impact on the business, and obviously the organization's revenue models and cost structures. And once I know what I need to know about the business, and I know your key strategic goals, that's when we can start translating business strategy into technology capabilities. I typically approach the press through or through some type of business capability mapping, where we will identify the business capabilities that are going to be necessary to support your strategic objectives. When we know what those objectives are and business capabilities are needed, then what we're going to do is work backwards to determine what changes need to be made in your organization to support those key business capabilities. Now, to do that, we will assess the current state of these capabilities, and we will identify gaps between where you want to go and what we actually have today in terms of capabilities. Then at that point, we're going to start creating our enterprise architecture that will provide the technology strategy, the standards and roadmaps they're going to be necessary to close those gaps between your current business capabilities and your future business capabilities. Now, by doing so, we're making sure that we're aligning our technology investments directly to measurable business outcomes, such as revenue growth, cost efficiency, risk reduction, improve customer service, or whatever that business needs. The next Enterprise Architect interview question would be how do you determine the target state architecture for an enterprise? I would answer it something like this. Determining the target state architecture begins with a clear understanding of the organization's strategic direction and operating model. I typically approach this in a few structured steps. First, my team and I performs a current state assessment across the key architectural domains. And that means your business architecture, your application architecture, your technology architecture, your data architecture, even your security architecture. Now that's going to give us a good picture of your existing environment, including what type of technical debt exists, what type of redundancies exist, and what type of that capability gaps exist. Now, when we know exactly what we have now, we're going to work with business leaders to define the future operating model. And that will include things like how the organization intends to deliver its product and services, how customers will interact with the company, and how operations must scale. At that point, we can start designing a target state architecture that's going to support the organization's future operating model. Now, that architecture may include changes to many components of that organization. Its business architecture, the way people do things, the organization's application architecture, data architecture, technology, architecture, security architecture, and others. And by doing it this way, we know the technology architecture is just not a technology vision. It's a business enablement framework. The third Enterprise Architect interview question in this video will be how do you prioritize architecture initiatives when resources are limited? And here's how I would answer it. Resource constraints are the reality of every organization, meaning there's an opportunity cost to every decision you make. And because we can't invest every, every in every opportunity, we must prioritize our investments. And we must prioritize them based upon business value and what it does to risk management. So I typically look at these key factors first with regards to prioritization is strategic alignment. Does this initiative directly support a key business objectives like revenue growth, regulatory compliance, or market to market expansion? The second thing that I used for prioritization is business impact specifically measurable business value. What is the impact of the architecture on the business? Does it increase revenue? Does it decrease operating expenses?

Does improve customer experience? Is it reduce operational risk, improve scalability? And how much? Now the third thing that I typically look at with regards to prioritization is risk exposure. Did the architecture reduce critical risks, such as security vulnerabilities or an aging infrastructure or regulatory requirements, and need to manage this effectively? I typically use some type of a portfolio management approach where initiatives are categorized into, say, strategic innovation investments versus operational efficiency, investments versus risk mitigation initiatives versus a foundational platform investments. And this enables us to inform leadership so that they can balance innovation with regards to things like operational stability, risk management and fund future technology investments that are going to create the highest strategic value for the organization. How do you measure the success of an enterprise architecture program? The way I would answer it would be something like this. The success of an enterprise architecture program should always be measured in terms of business outcome. That means we are assessing several factors. The first factor we're going to assess is the financial impact. What was the financial impact of this architecture to the organization? Did it increase revenue? Did it decrease operating expenses? We need to know what it is and by how much. The second thing that I typically measure success for is by business alignment, are the technology investments of this architecture supporting strategic initiatives, whether that be digital transformation, new product launches, operational efficiency or whatever. The goal of the architecture was. I also tend to look at technology efficiency and cost management. Did that architecture reduce duplication, for example, of having ten versions of the same application? We reduced cost by removing some. Did it simplify our technology stack so we can move more quickly and easily in the future with less complexity? Did we standardize a platform to make things simpler for the future? Those types of results are the types of initiatives often yield very measurable results. And in terms of reduction of operational cost, I typically look at delivery speed and agility. Did the architecture enable the organization to deliver new capabilities faster, or by using, say, a reusable service or a standardized platform? I also look at risk. Did the architecture itself reduce risk? Did the architecture improve security posture? Did it improve regulatory compliance? Did it improve operational resilience? And I typically look at organizational adoption meaning it could be a great architecture. But are people actually using it and isn't it making is it making an impact in their daily lives and daily work? Now, the last Enterprise Architect interview question for this video is how do you communicate your architecture strategy to executives? And here's how I would answer that. I would say that communicating our architecture strategy to executives is going to require a completely different approach than communicating with engineers. Executives don't want to hear about technology components. They want to understand business outcomes, financial impact, and strategic risk. So when I present an architecture, when executives I focus on the three main elements. First is the business value. How does this architecture help that organization grow? Revenue, reduce cost, improve customer experience, or mitigate risk in some way? The second thing that I use to communicate is the financial and operational impact, because executives need to understand what investment is required, what the expected return on investment is, what type of risk reduction or mitigation are giving, and if so, what's the value in that in terms of dollars or pounds or what have you? And the other is the timeline to actually see any benefit or are we going to see immediate results, or is it going to take several years? The third thing that's really critical for communicating your architecture strategy to executives is using efficient and executive ready communication, executive ready visuals, what have you. Things that are going to show the current state that we have and the challenges that exist, the target future state and the transformation between where we are and where we want to go. When speaking with executives, I avoid any kind of technical language, any kind of jargon, and I frame this discussion in terms of strategic capability enablement. Now, if you have a desire to become an enterprise architect, we not only have enterprise architecture training programs like Cloud Architect, training programs, security architect training programs, but we hold two free weekly architecture webinars per week and on these free architecture webinars per week, which are hosted on zoom. We will talk about what do we do as an enterprise architect versus cloud architect versus security architect. The skill you need for your first architect job. The skills that you need to have. We'll talk about how to get employers to come to you

for your first enterprise architect job or security architect job. We'll talk about everything you need to learn. And of course, you can ask me any questions that you desire about your enterprise architect, career, cloud architect, career, security architect career. And I'll do anything I can on these free webinars to assist you. You can sign up for any of our free architecture webinars by visiting the description of this video and signing up for one. And then I'll meet you on zoom, and I look forward to meeting you. If you enjoyed this video on Enterprise Architect interview questions, maybe share it with someone that you know that wants to become an enterprise architect. Maybe give it a like, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell to be notified of new videos. To assist you in your enterprise architect career. If you want more videos on Enterprise Architect interview questions, let me know in the, in the comments section so I know what to make for you. And I know what you want. This is Mike Gibbs signing off for now, and I hope to see you in, another webinar, on zoom where we can meet and speak face to face or another video or in class. Take care everyone. I look forward to speaking with you soon.