There are two kinds of Enterprise Architects. The first kind reads a chapter of an industry framework, finds a reference architecture on a vendor blog, redraws it in their tool of choice, and presents it as their own thinking. They are useful. They are also, on a long enough timeline, automatable. The second kind treats every engagement as a small piece of original research. They produce frameworks, not slides. They get paid for what only they could have written. I’ve been thinking a lot about which one I’m becoming, and a passage I read recently sharpened the question in a way I want to share.
