How Deep Should Enterprise Architects Go?
How enterprise architects create impact by bridging, not by owning every detail
Enterprise architecture (EA) is one of those disciplines where the boundaries are fuzzy by design. The role sits between business and technology, strategy and delivery, plans and execution. That’s exactly why the question often comes up:
How much do enterprise architects actually need to know about the subject matter they’re architecting?
Should they know the business better than the CEO? Should they know technology platforms and integrations better than solution architects or developers?
The short answer: no. But the longer answer is more interesting.
The Business Side: Not Replacing Leadership
An enterprise architect isn’t the one who defines what the business is or where it’s going. That responsibility belongs to leadership—executives, business owners, the CEO. If you doubt it, try drafting a five-year vision for the business and presenting it to the executive team—without involving them first. You’ll quickly see where the ownership lies.
What EA can do is make strategy more actionable: by translating broad goals into capability needs, by showing how processes and applications connect (or don’t), and by making dependencies and risks visible. Often, simply by talking with people across the organization, architects can surface connections and tensions that would otherwise remain hidden.
So no, you don’t need to know the business better than the CEO. But you do need to know it well enough to speak the same language, ask the right questions, and highlight the architectural consequences of business choices.
And importantly—you can learn. Even in a new industry, an enterprise architect can reach a useful working knowledge surprisingly quickly by focusing on the essentials: core capabilities, key processes and applications, and how information flows through them.
The Data Side: Where Enterprise Architects Add Real Value
Information management is often the hardest part. Data ownership, quality, flows, and usage are messy in almost every organization.
Here, an enterprise architect can bring structure without needing to be the deepest subject-matter expert. You don’t need to know every dataset in detail. Instead, you can:
Map the key information domains,
Clarify who owns and uses the data,
Show how information flows across applications and processes,
Highlight risks (e.g. duplicates, gaps, uncontrolled external flows).
And again—this is something you can learn fast enough to add value. You don’t have to walk in knowing all the business-specific terms. You just need to build a framework where business and IT people can make sense of their own data.
The IT Side: Not Replacing Solution Architects
EA work naturally touches IT—but usually not at the deepest level.
At the application map or data flow level, enterprise architects can already add a lot of value by:
Showing which applications support which processes
Highlighting integrations and dependencies
Identifying redundancies or gaps
EA can also take a wider view of the technology landscape: mapping the spread of platforms, tools, and technologies in use, and helping the organization manage that variety. By making the portfolio visible, architects support better decisions—when to consolidate, where to standardize, and where to invest.
You don’t need detailed technical knowledge to do this. The value comes from clarity and surfacing the big picture, not from knowing implementation technologies in detail, designing APIs, or configuring platforms.
Those detailed solution decisions belong to solution architects. The enterprise architect’s role is to align, guide, and set direction—not to take over.
Where Enterprise Architects Sometimes Go Deeper
That said, the scope of EA varies by organization. In some, EA does include things like process modeling or solution architecture that can go fairly far into the details.
And that’s okay—as long as it’s in service of the bigger purpose: building the big picture, ensuring coherence, and enabling alignment across silos.
If the details you capture help others understand how things fit together, they’re worth it. If you’re just producing models nobody uses, then it’s wasted effort.
The Sweet Spot: Bridging Without Replacing
An enterprise architect’s real value doesn’t come from knowing more than the experts. It comes from knowing just enough of each domain to connect them:
Not more about business than the CEO or business owners.
Not more about data than data stewards or analysts.
Not more about technology than solution architects or developers.
The role is less about being the deepest specialist in any one area, and more about learning quickly, connecting the dots, and making complexity understandable. That’s where EA earns its influence: by turning fragmented expertise into a shared picture that others can act on.
The sweet spot is in bridging—seeing across boundaries and making those perspectives work together.
Final Thoughts
How deep enterprise architects should go will always depend on the context—organization, maturity, scope of the EA function.
But the principle is simple: know enough to be credible, and keep learning. Don’t try to replace the people accountable for decisions or delivery. Instead, use your time to build the big picture, enable leaders to make better choices, and help specialists see how their work connects to the whole.
That’s the real impact of EA: not knowing everything upfront, but learning quickly enough to make a difference.
✍️ Author News
Big milestone: the proof of my upcoming EA book is now complete. That means it’s essentially print-ready—publication is getting very close! I’ll share more details (and the release date) soon.
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