Enterprise Architecture

Technology discussions reference applications but business strategy discussions reference capabilities. You can't connect the two conversations. When business wants to invest in a capability, you can't quickly identify what applications support it or what gaps exist.

Every project chooses technology independently, creating sprawl across vendors, frameworks and platforms. You have five different cloud platforms, eight integration patterns and twelve AI vendors because no standards exist. Supporting this diversity costs more than consolidation would save.

Architecture decisions are made in meetings and emails with rationale lost to time. When someone questions a decision, you can't explain why it was made because the people involved have moved on. You're revisiting settled decisions because new architects don't know they've already been evaluated.

You don't know what applications talk to each other until an integration breaks. Change impact assessments rely on asking people what might be affected. Critical dependencies are discovered during outages, not during planning.

Your application inventory is a spreadsheet that's six months out of date. No one knows who owns half the applications or what they do. Lifecycle status is unknown so you're supporting applications that should have been retired.

You can list your applications but can't explain what business capabilities they support. Technology decisions are made without understanding business impact. You're investing in new capabilities without knowing if existing applications already provide them.