I remember when the title 'architect' in IT became a buzz word around 2005, a fellow blogger comments that it is just a new way to say ‘I'm senior enough not to code any more’. It is a joke, a good one, if you don’t really understand what architecture is supposed to do with the system, and how you are supposed to make that happen.
Today, an even bigger title flowing around the job market – ‘Enterprise Architect’. What is that supposed to mean? A more senior-er position that you don’t have to code plus a c-level bonus?
Before you can call yourself an ‘Enterprise Architect’, you have to understand what an Enterprise Architecture is. The ‘architecture’ in system engineering perspective is a structure that defines its internal components and the relationship between the components, as well as the relationship to environment it resides. The ‘Enterprise Architecture’ comes from the theory that an organization (enterprise) is a system. Therefore it can be viewed as a structure that defines its internal components (functional departments or regional divisions) and the relationship between them (power and resource sharing, command chains), as well as relationship to its environment – political, environmental, competitive…
An ‘Enterprise Architect’ is a role who comes from engineering or science discipline with a good understanding of businesses and industries; who is responsible for over seeing the business as a system and design and govern it as such a system that can only gain its competitive edge by generating the output effectively and efficiently from its limited resources. It’s not a MBA, not an EMBA. It’s a system engineer at a larger, human-centered system.