Welcome to an enlightening journey that unveils the significance, responsibilities, and strategic impact of an Enterprise Architect within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). In this blog, we delve into the pivotal role that architects play in harmonizing innovation, technology, and business objectives. But before we jump in, let’s take a quick look at who exactly an Enterprise Architect is?
Who is an Enterprise Architect?
In the SAFe framework, the Enterprise Architect takes on multi-faceted role who plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between technical design and strategic alignment. They are responsible for establishing the portfolio’s technology vision, strategy and roadmap.
They provide the vision, evolution and communication of an organization’s technical architecture. This often involves incorporating Cloud, Big Data and AI technologies to create strategic advantage. They also guide the portfolio’s value stream as they develop new elements for the organization’s enterprise architecture.
Roles and Responsibilities of Enterprise Architect
The Enterprise Architect’s responsibilities can be categorized into the following areas as shown in the figure below, followed by a detail look into each of these areas.
First Responsibility: Aligning Business and Technical Strategies
1. Aligning organization design with optimal architectural design
The EA should ensure that the organizational design of Agile teams and ARTs aligns with the desired technical architecture, and it is not the other way around.
2. Defining Strategic themes
The input of EA’s is vital in creating strategic themes due to their broad knowledge of technologies, domains, architectures and many other things. They collaborate with the LPM, enterprise executives and portfolio stakeholders to develop strategic themes for a specific portfolio.
3. Communicating vision and business strategy
EAs need to understand and communicate strategic themes and other business drivers for architecture to System, Solution and non-technical stakeholders.
4. Responding to emerging opportunities and threats
It is the EA’s responsibility to ensure that the organization takes advantage of upcoming opportunities and respond to threats by providing technical inputs across value streams.
5. Offering technical recommendations
EAs provide guidance and suggestions for developing and delivering technology stacks, managing interoperability and application program interfaces (APIs), hosting and cloud computing strategy, and governing artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.
6. Maintaining relationships
EAs should create and maintain personal connections with ART and Solution Train Architects and Agile Teams through tasks and events like getting feedback on current initiatives, attending system demos, participating in PI planning etc.
7. Identifying value streams
EAs assist the Value Management Office (VMO) and the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) in identifying and designing Development Value Streams that optimize the flow of value for new and existing technology initiatives.
8. Enabling Built-in quality
EA’s coordinate with System and Solution Architects to ensure their solutions align with the broader technical vision, helping value streams to maintain built-in quality.
Second Responsibility: Establish the Portfolio’s Intentional Architecture
1. Maintaining the architectural runway
EA’s are responsible for building and maintaining the architectural runway. This is done by serving as Epic Owners, collaborate with value streams to guide the evolution of solutions, codes and infrastructure.
2. Aligning technology approaches across ARTs
The EA’s must actively engage with System and Solution Architects to ensure emerging design choices are made with an understanding of the overall architectural strategy and roadmap.
3. Setting technology direction
EA’s should work with LPM and VMO to determine the direction of technology. They should define and communicate the architectural roadmap, ensuring the business is investing in the right systems.
4. Coding and pattern reuse
EA’s work with System and Solution Architects and Agile Teams to help reuse code and existing design patterns to implement new business and technology functionality.
5. Synchronizing technical disciplines
During a PI, EAs help synchronize various disciplines across solutions whenever applicable: system and data security and quality, production infrastructure, solution user experience (Lean UX), and Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs).
6. Defining organizational structures that promote desired architecture
EA’s play a critical role in defining structures within the organization that helps promote the desired architecture. Understanding Conway’s law is essential to organizational design.
Third Responsibility: Rationalizing the Technology Portfolio
1. Eliminate redundancy
The EA’s should consolidate similar applications which in turns eliminates reduncancy for the teams who might be using multiple applications.
2. Minimize unnecessary IT spending to reduce IT cost
By eliminating redundant applications, EA’s ensure there is no unnecessary spending on IT, eventually reducing IT cost.
3. Reduce complexity
It is the EA’s responsibility to reduce unused applications and moving to the cloud, thus reducing complexity via centralized management and automation.
4. Support procurement
EA’s can help streamline procurement and renewal planning as organizations review existing purchasing structures, products, license agreements, and other transactions.
5. Reduce training overhead
Every application used at an organization requires vendors or in-house staff support, which can be expensive. EA’s should ensure there are fewer and only necessary applications are present, reducing the money spent on maintaining these applications.
Fourth Responsibility: Fostering Innovate Ideas and Technologies
1. Achieving business outcomes
The EA should ensure the portfolio reaches its business outcomes by using appropriate and new technologies.
2. Aligning technical decisions
EAs should help coordinate and develop common standards and architectures for system and data security, quality, production infrastructure, and Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs). This should include both internal and external enterprise architecture standards.
3. Supporting the development environment
The EA’s do this by facilitating the reuse of code, components, and proven design patterns. Influencing and promoting good practices for modeling, system design, and coding.
4. Retiring obsolete technologies
EA’s help the portfolio’s value streams migrate off outdated technologies and decommission solutions that are no longer fit for purpose.
Fifth Responsibility: Guiding Enabler Epics
1. Acting as an Epic Owner
EAs serve as Epic Owners for architectural initiatives, leading enabler epics through the Portfolio Kanban and their subsequent implementation.
2. Splitting epics into features
By collaborating with Product and Solution Management, EA’s must decompose enabler epics into enabler features and capabilities.
3. Engaging in SAFe events
EA’s must participate in PI Planning, System, and Solution Demos whenever a critical activity is related to an enabler epic.
EAs who can adapt to new ways of thinking and working and stay up-to-date on the latest technological developments will be essential to the organization’s success. They also act on the human system that creates the technology to ensure greater agility and effectiveness. They are Lean-Agile Leaders responsible for mentoring teams and enhancing the overall capabilities of contributors.
Get details about certified SAFe certifications:
Aman Luthra 
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