Enterprise architecting for digital disruption

The catchphrase of the year is digital disruption. It's finally clear that digital complacency is a path to nonexistence even in industries that havent yet felt the direct impact of the digital era. Joel Crabb explains why retail has been completely disrupted and, in the process, is reinventing enterprise architecture for digital relevancy.

Traditional enterprise architecture is officially dead in companies such as Target or Best Buy that have seen their markets trampled by digital interlopers. The traditional processes are too slow and irrelevant in a fast-changing world, where keeping up is virtually impossible and getting ahead is seen as irresponsible daydreaming. The only answer is ditching the traditional EA frameworks and everything generally considered EA (e.g., business architecture, infrastructure architecture, application architecture, and data architecture) and instead turn back the clock and focus on the core fundamental idea underpinning EA’s initial invention: business-aligning technology strategy. This shift back to strategy and holistic company-wide (enterprise) architecture has been made possible by the rapid evolution of product management, infrastructure, applications, and data, where product management replaces business architecture; infrastructure is now either an internal or external cloud; applications are being reduced to microservices or serverless architectures; and data is highly available and decentralized. Joel Crabb walks you through how to restructure EA and explains where to focus its efforts to add maximum value to a business while supporting a software engineering culture. Although there are still areas where full enterprise alignment is necessary to multiply the impact of technology decisions, we must decide on a new name for this function, since enterprise architects need no longer apply.