Enterprise Architecture vs Architecture Theater (Critical Difference)

Would you like to know the difference between really great enterprise architecture and what I like to call architecture theater? If so, this video is for you. In today's video, we're going to talk about organizations that have great enterprise architecture practices versus what me and many others called, which is architecture, theater and architecture theater. While it looks like architecture, it is an architectural style. And you can tell when a company is architecture theater because it's going to look impressive, it's going to sound strategic, and they're going to produce a whole lot of diagrams. Now, what's the difference between real enterprise architecture and architecture theater? Real enterprise architecture delivers a measurable business impact. An architecture theater is just about a bunch of documents and architecture artifacts. And I'm going to break down the difference in this video between what contributes to really great enterprise architecture that helps organizations be more successful versus architecture theater that hurts organizations and ultimately kills architect careers. So architecture theater is, realistically speaking, when you've got an architecture practice and everybody looks busy, they all sound smart. They all feel important, but nothing changes. And what usually happens in architecture theory, the architecture team comes up with these massive slide decks that nobody's even going to look at. They make beautiful diagrams that nobody cares about. They use frameworks as decorations and everywhere along the way to make it sound smart. They have governance meetings with absolutely zero authority and architects who talk a lot, but never influence anything or never change anything. That's architecture theater. It's optimizing appearances, just like in a play. But there's no results. That's not real architecture. And executives can easily smell architecture. Theater from kilometers away. So architecture theater. Let's talk about it. Why it happens. It doesn't just happen because people are busy. It happens because either the architects don't have the business acumen, the leadership skills, or executive skills to actually engage with the key business leaders. Maybe they don't have the actual skills, and they're more comfortable drawing diagrams than helping their leaders make key decisions. They're optimizing for, say, technical elegance, status, a business value. And it happens when the people don't really understand architecture. So they retreat and they retreating. Detective. More documentation and they retreat into architecture artifacts. And guess what? The organization gets lots of documentation, no direction, zero accountability for outcomes and no results. Now let's talk about great enterprise architecture. Really, enterprise architecture is not about drawing diagrams. Real enterprise architecture is about decisions. Great enterprise architects create great enterprise architectures that align technology needs. Are the technology chosen to support the business strategy? Real enterprise architecture is helping to shape the organization's investment decision. Real work in enterprise architecture is about optimizing the business's capabilities. Reducing risk with intention across the enterprise and enabling measurable business outcomes. So great architects don't ask questions like what should the architecture look like? Great architects ask the question what business problem are we trying to solve and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Enterprise architecture exists to help leaders choose wisely. Under real world constraints, legal constraints, financial constraints, operational constraints, what have you. So kind of want to make it more clear. Architecture theater says here's a target state diagram. Everyone no great architecture says there are. Here are three options. Their costs, their risk, and their impact on, say, revenue and operations. When Architecture Theater says we follow this framework, really great enterprise architect will say we accelerated time to market by six months and we reduced operational risk by 30%. Architecture theater is asking for permission. Great architecture is earning its authority by delivering real results. So here's something that I want most enterprise architects to hear. Unless you've ever been a chief architect, or VP or an SVP of architecture executives, which are going to be the people that promote us, what have you are not going to evaluate our architecture by diagram quality, which tools we use, or how closely you follow toe graphs, arc, min, or any other enterprise architecture framework. The executives are going to evaluate your enterprise architecture by. Did this architecture help us grow?

Did this architecture reduce our risks? Did this architecture in some way give us the ability to better execute as an organization? Did this architecture help us make better decisions faster? And if the answer isn't obvious, your architecture is invisible and invisible architectures get defunded. So let's talk about the career impact. And unfortunately I see many architecture career stall here. But they don't need to. The key why careers get stalled is the architects lose influence. They get sidelined or they get replaced consultants. And it's almost never because the architects lack technical skills. It's almost exclusively because they delivered theater, architecture, theater instead of enhanced business outcomes. So we enterprise architect, we're not paid to be smart. We're paid to be useful at the executive level. So if you want to be a great enterprise architect, get promoted, the chief architect, CIO and other roles, here's the mindset shift I want you to make. Stop asking yourself which art architecture artifact I could create. And then start asking yourself which decision I am enabling and who owns that decision. See, great enterprise architecture is not about being loud. It's about being effective. And when enterprise architecture stops being theater, it becomes indispensable for the organization. And that's what we teach. When I teach enterprise architects how to be great, our enterprise architects, cloud great architects because that's the job, not theater. Now, if you'd like to become an enterprise architect or an executive architect, or a cloud architect, or a security architect, or an AI architect, we run two completely free architecture webinars per week live on zoom. And in these free architecture webinars, you can sign up for it with a link in the description of this video. Just fill out the form and we'll invite you to the webinar. We'll be able to go over what we do as architects. The skills you need as an architect, what hiring managers are looking for are what your portfolio should look like at literally everything that's necessary to help you get your first architect job, or get promoted into an enterprise architect role, or another type of an architect role. And because it's live on zoom and free on zoom, you can ask me any architecture career questions you want and I'll be happy to answer them. Like I said, you can sign up for these free architecture webinars in the description of this video. Now, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a like. Subscribe to our channel and hit the bell to get out of new videos to assist you in your architecture career, whether that be an enterprise architect, multi-cloud architect, security architect, AI architect or any other kind of architect. This is Mike Gibbs signing off. For now. I hope to either see you in a free webinar, a class of ours, or of course, the next YouTube video.