Build Your EA Practice Strategy

Craft the practice your organization needs to solve the problems your stakeholders care about the most.

Analyst perspective

Make your EA practice a strategic partner

Howard Feng, CBA, AWS CCP, CBE

Senior Workshop Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Andrew Kum-Seun

Research Director, Application Delivery and Application Management Info-Tech Research Group

Enterprise architecture (EA) is not an operational support role or confined to IT. EA is most effective when it positioned as a strategic discipline that integrates business and technology, ensuring that all enterprise structures, decisions, and designs are optimized to realize the organization’s vision and strategic objectives. The core mandate is to translate visions and strategies into practical architectures and transformation plans across the enterprise to drive tangible enterprise outcomes and value.

Distinguish your EA practice by motivating proactive and collaborative engagements with business leaders to understand their concerns, shape enterprise strategies, and ensure every architectural decision is anchored in business priorities. EA provides a data-informed and structural foundation for enterprise change by guiding strategies, influencing the project portfolio, guiding solution development, and ensuring success in solution operationalization across the enterprise. Discover the art of the possible with your EA practice.

Executive summary

Your Challenge

As organizations mature and adopt more complex technologies, they face increasing challenges in:

• Aligning IT initiatives with strategic priorities, stakeholder expectations, and business capabilities.
• Managing and scaling redundant, outdated, and fragmented processes and technologies.
• Ensuring flexibility of IT operations and technologies while adhering to quality standards.

Enterprise architecture (EA) provides the approach, framework, and thinking needed to boost IT support, guide technology decisions, and ensure investments support long-term strategic objectives.

Common Obstacles

Implementing EA is not as simple as hiring someone. It involves organizational investment to build the necessary foundations EA need to be successful. However, many factors stand in the way:

• Lack of organizational buy-in due to EA’s perception as an overly bureaucratic and bulky process rather than a value delivery enabler.
• Dynamically shifting organizational demands and maturing technologies that make aligning EA services with strategic objectives difficult.
• Overwhelming scope of EA’s organizational domains if the practice is not clearly defined and roles are ill-equipped and unsupported.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Create a compelling value proposition. State the organizational purpose, goals, and strategic problems an EA practice is intended to solve. Indicate the role the practice will play in guiding future organizational and technology decisions.
• Prioritize the EA services that support your vision. Address the EA inefficiencies found in your current state assessment. Build the foundations needed to scale your EA practice.
• Communicate and rollout the EA practice. Define and present the initiatives to deliver your EA vision. Accommodate the concerns and influence of your stakeholders to maximize EA success.

Info-Tech Insight

EA is already happening. But, it is often uncoordinated, siloed, and overly bureaucratic. Transform EA into an organizational capability. Deliver the EA insights, designs, and services that solve your stakeholders’ most pressing problems and achieve their strategic goals and vision.

Build Your EA Practice Strategy

Craft the practice your organization needs to solve the problems your stakeholders care about the most

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Disruptions, distractions, and complexities are the norm

What we are facing today is transforming the ways we operate and deliver value. Organizations MUST change to meet this reality.

Increased Cybersecurity Incidents

Most Common Cybersecurity Incidents

1. Data Breach
2. Regulatory Compliance Violation
3. Ransomware
4. Insider Risk

Source: Splunk, 2025

AI Is No Longer a Nice-to-Have

84%

84% of respondents say they are looking to add more AI capabilities over the next three years.

Source: Camunda, 2025

Deployments Are Increasingly Complex

“Organizations deal with a median of four public clouds.”

Source: F5, 2025

However, many organizations struggle to embrace sudden changes

1. Unclear translation of stakeholder needs into actionable IT initiatives

   Understanding user needs was identified as the most challenging part of the jobs of surveyed developers. (n=23,262)Source: Jetbrains, 2024

2. Lack of confidence and trust in enterprise data

   67%

   67% of respondents stated they don’t completely trust the data used by their organization for decision-making. (n=565)Source: Precisely, 2024

3. Risk management is not fully integrated across the organization

   33%

   Only 33% have a fully integrated enterprise risk management program. (n=259)Source: Info-Tech Tech Trends, 2025

4. Enterprise systems are burdened with technical debt

   51%

   51% of respondents dedicated more than a quarter of their annual IT/engineering budget to remediating technical debt. (n=1,037)Source: vFunction, 2024

Use EA to overcome the chaos you are facing

The need for a well-defined EA is no longer a luxury but a fundamental necessity. Here is why:

• Managing Unprecedented Complexity

  Modern organizations are incredibly complex with intricate webs of processes, systems, and data sources. EA untangles this complexity to ensure the organization is efficient and can respond effectively to change.

• Navigating Constant Change

  The pace of technology growth is exponential. EA provides the structure to navigate these changes proactively, allowing the organization to prepare, adapt, and thrive.

• Breaking Down Silos

  Departments often work in silos, leading to fragmented customer experiences, conflicting decisions, and process bottlenecks. EA promotes system-thinking and encourages cross-department collaboration to optimize the broader delivery of value.

• Ensuring Sustainability and Scalability

  Business can outgrow their technologies. EA ensures that business capabilities and technologies scale sustainably together, avoiding unnecessary, costly, and disruptive overhauls in the future.

From conversations with Info-Tech analysts, advisors and counselors.

What is enterprise architecture (EA)?

Enterprise architecture (EA) is an intricate discipline and a strategic business capability that addresses an organization's strategy, operations, structures, and behaviors. Its intent is to illustrate how an organization can most effectively move toward the future state and achieve its strategic objectives.

Learn the various elements that make up enterprise architecture

EA brings the organization and technologies closer together

Operationalize EA with an effective practice

Your EA practice is the mechanism for addressing your complex, organization-wide challenges and supporting the achievement of your strategic objectives. It does this by maximizing the value of your technology landscape and creating flexible strategic planning.

The increasing intricacy of modern business operations and the heavy reliance on productive technologies necessitate a disciplined EA practice. An effective practice leads to:

1. Strategic Alignment

   Ensures IT and technology initiatives directly support and satisfy overarching business goals through a common language.

2. Enhanced Agility

   Promotes architectural principles, standards, references, and guardrails to enable and accommodate the rapid shifts in market conditions, customer needs, and technology trends.

3. Risk Management

   Provides a structured approach to mitigate organizational risks, simplify compliance, streamline compliance processes, and standardize appropriate controls.

4. Impactful Decisions

   Delivers clear, data-driven insights into the structure and inner workings of the organization. It connects operational metrics to strategic outcomes, ensuring decisions drive the desired impact.

Inspired by LeanIX’s Value of Enterprise Architecture.

Start your EA practice journey with a strategy

An EA practice strategy defines how your organization intends to establish, operate, mature and evolve its EA practice to deliver business value, support strategic goals and objectives, improve decision-making, and effectively plan technology transformation.

This Blueprint focuses on steps 1 and 2.

1. LEARN

   • Learn what is EA and what is involved to be successful

2. STRATEGIZE

   • State your value proposition
   • Define EA scope, objectives & principles
   • Roadmap your target state

3. OPERATE

   Agile Enterprise Architecture Operating Model
   • Define your EA operating environment
   • Create your EA functional design
   • Design your EA engagement and deployment model

4. GOVERN

   Create a Right-Sized Enterprise Architecture Governance Framework
   • Define your EA governing bodies
   • Build your EA policies and standards
   • Formalize stakeholder communications

5. SPECIALIZE

   Domain Architectures:
   Enterprise Architecture Research Center
   • Clarify the domain objectives and principles
   • Set domain standards and policies
   • Improve domain architecture capabilities

Set reasonable expectations for your practice

Many organizations are starting to see the benefits of EA, but the effective practices are not widespread in the industry.

Our EA helps align IT investments with long-term strategy to reduce risk and deliver business value outcomes

66%

Of respondents agree or somewhat agree

Our EA deliverables are current and relevant to support and drive change

66%

Of respondents agree or somewhat agree

The mission and value of our EA function are understood and valued across the organization

62%

Of respondents agree or somewhat agree

We have sufficiently trained and business-knowledgeable EA practitioners

55%

Of respondents agree or somewhat agree

n=523. Source: Bizzdesign, 2025.

Maximize your practice’s value

EA success is not a given. Twenty-nine percent of enterprise architects say no one in the company knows about the EA team (n=360, LeanIX, 2025). Your practice must be ready to justify and communicate its value.

What are the top activities to improve EA’s impact to the organization?

1. Improve the communication of EA’s value to the organization.
2. Improve the EA development process and its adoption.
3. Deliver more strategic insights to support senior management with strategy and investment decisions.
4. Measure outcomes to demonstrate the value of EA to the business.

Source: Bizzdesign, 2025

ABC needed an EA practice to optimize value delivery

INDUSTRY

Telecommunication

SOURCE

Info-Tech Workshop

Info-Tech Engagement With ABC

• Improve alignment of IT and business strategy
• Enhance stakeholder value from business investments
• Drive the optimization of IT assets, resources, capabilities, and business processes

This engagement focused on developing the EA practice strategy for:

• Gathering feedback for optimizing enterprise architecture from key stakeholders and participants and identifying prevalent related pains, challenges, frustrations, risks, and opportunities.
• Identifying external aspects that will affect the operations of the organization and deliverables of the enterprise architecture team.
• Assessing the organization’s current enterprise architecture maturity, planning for a desired target state taking into consideration other organization-wide strategic priorities and projects, analyzing the gaps, and formulating initiatives for attaining the desired target state.
• Developed the vision, mission, goals, objectives, and functions needed to optimize the value of EA.
• Drafted an EA activity roadmap to focus the activities of the EA team in the coming three years.

Download the EA Strategy Workshop Sanitized Report

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

EA Introduction Presentation Template

Educate the organization on what EA is, how EA can help, and what is needed for EA to be effective.

EA Services Assessment and Planning Tool

Assess the current state of your EA services and plan for their delivery.

EA Practice Strategy One Pager Template

Communicate the objectives and desired structure of your EA practice with a one page.

EA Strategy Workshop Sanitized Report

Learn what one organization has done to define their EA practice strategy.

Key deliverable:

Document the strategy of your EA practice in the language your stakeholders understand. Tailor this document to fit your strategic priorities and EA practice objectives.

Insight Summary

Info-Tech Insight

EA is already happening. But, it is often uncoordinated, siloed, and overly bureaucratic. Transform EA into an organizational capability. Deliver the EA insights, designs, and services that solve your stakeholders’ most pressing problems and achieve their strategic goals and vision.

Phase 1

If your stakeholders do not know why EA exists, they will see it as a bureaucratic hurdle. Start with what is most painful and concerning your stakeholders. Then, elaborate how EA will contribute to your organization’s success through a compelling value proposition.

Phase 2

It is tempting to enforce EA standards and controls from the outset. However, too much oversight too soon constrains innovation, alienates teams, and restricts flexibility. Enable EA first, structure later. Start with good EA principles and guidelines then evolve to standards and frameworks as the organization grows and matures.

Phase 3

Left alone, organizational units gravitate toward siloed decisions that do not consider the ramifications to others. Design an engagement model that clearly indicates which planning, delivery, and operations activities EA will participate in. If teams do not know when to involve EA, they will involve them too late or not at all.

Phase 4

Your EA practice will lose momentum if it takes too long to show measurable improvements. However, we can’t just focus on the now. Demonstrate quick-win changes and the initiations of your practice’s foundations. Communicate success across your organization to maintain stakeholder buy-in and drive the motivation to scale.

Info-Tech’s methodology for EA practice strategy

Blueprint benefits

Justify the Importance of an EA Practice With a Value Proposition

• Illustrate the role you want the EA practice to play in your organization considering past experiences, current perspectives, and industry trends.
• Reveal the strategic priorities driving the organization and the stakeholder pains with achieving those objectives.
• Clarify how an EA practice can help alleviate stakeholder pains and the expected value an EA practice can deliver.

• Achievable outcomes your EA practice is expected to deliver.
• Identify the highest priority problems to be solved first.
• Communicate the value of EA in the language stakeholders understand.

Illustrate an Appropriately Scoped and Designed EA Practice

• Indicate the EA services that will generate the most value.
• Define a reasonable scope of your EA practice.
• Envision the target-state engagement, governance, and deployment models that align with your vision.
• Compile an achievable roadmap that describes how your EA practice will be rolled out and who will be accountable for its success.

• A well-articulated strategy of your EA practice that is tailored to your priorities, structure, perspectives, and experiences.
• Confident and invested EA practitioners who are bought into the EA practice and are willing to support its delivery.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Executive & Technical Counseling

"Our team and processes are maturing; however to expedite the journey we'll need a seasoned practitioner to coach and validate approaches, deliverables, and opportunities."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assitance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all five options.

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.