Architecture is fundamentally about change and any architect must be a skilled leader in change. In my team charters I’ve often defined  that architects are a catalyst for change. By that I mean that architecture:

• Speeds up change for the organisation
• Ensure that enough change is achieve to gain value
• Smooths the impact of that change, allowing for easier adoption

BizzDesign, the EA and modelling tool company, last year did some research on the “State of Enterprise Architecture 2021”. This reveals a high correlation between Enterprise Architecture maturity and organizational agility. Organisation who could deliver change quickly and adapt were the ones with mature Enterprise Architecture practices. This should not be a huge shock as architecture is a key part of change, and playing the change agent role.

Architects must be able to present a compelling picture of the future. To influence and align stakeholders so we are all focused on the same future. The communication and influencing skills of an architect are as important as their technical skills.  Change is a team sport and teams must communicate well.

Our compelling picture of the future must fully inform the organisation. We need to be clear on the business outcome achieved, what Gartner calls the business moments of value achieved. The benefit of the change but also our estimated cost, timeline and implications of that change. A change agent has a responsibility not only to influence change to happen but to ensure that stakeholders are fully informed of benefits and costs. Of course the detail and certainty on these evolve through the change lifecycle (ideation through business case to detailed design).

To fully understand the change proposed an architect will produce a catalogue of the jigsaw pieces which make up the change. It is key that all of the pieces of the jigsaw are recognised so that the change and any impacts can be managed. Change without full architecture involvement often goes wrong with informal assumptions being made that other changes or services will be available. These often result in unfunded issues.

I’ve talked in a previous blog on architecture acting across different supertypes or levels: Strategy, Change Delivery and Engineering. The agent of change responsibilities are there across each of these levels. To fully achieve agile change for an organisation though the connection between these levels of change must be managed and governed. Architects are key to managing these aggregation relationships in the portfolio of change.

An IT architect as an agent of change must clearly and constantly communicate the compelling picture of the future. This must include all of the pieces of the jigsaw of change, so that the organisation is fully informed. This needs to be done well across the different aggregation levels of change within an organisation (from application to strategy) to enable a successful agile culture of change.

• Enterprise Architecture