Blog 3 of 4: The craftsmanship of enterprise architecture

What are enterprise architecture competences?

The European e-Competence Framework defines competence as “the result-oriented application of knowledge, skills, and attitude”. For the purposes of this post, we’ll define these categories as follows:

• Knowledge: everything the architect knows
• Skills: the ability to carry out certain tasks
• Attitude: their personal conduct and behaviour

Next, we’ll break down each of those three headings into more detail, and discuss what an enterprise architect needs beyond the “briefcase” of methods and processes.

Essential competences for enterprise architects

An architect’s competence grows over time. With each project, you gain more knowledge and experience in the field – so a project or system architect might eventually grow to fulfil a domain or enterprise architecture role.

This new field brings different stakeholder relationships and new ways of working. So, as your subject matter knowledge expands, it’s important to match it by developing your skills and attitude. The broader your field of work, the bigger the repertoire of knowledge, skills, and attitude you’ll need.

What architects need to know

An architect needs comprehensive knowledge. As well as broad appreciation and experience of architectural methods, you’ll need to understand the field of change management itself, and know about the stakeholders you’re dealing with.

Meanwhile, the world is constantly changing, creating new opportunities and threats – so as architect, you’ll never finish learning. Ideally, you’ll be part of a team that develops craftmanship together, with each architect striving for their own “T shape”: broad professional knowledge alongside deep specialism in one or more subject areas.

In previous blogs in this series, we’ve used the metaphor of city planning, and it works here too. When new building materials and techniques emerge, it makes innovative designs possible: for example, Milan’s “Bosco Verticale” towers which combine residential accommodation with trees and shrubs on all floors.

Skills an enterprise architect needs

An architect needs a wide skill set, but four skills are particularly important. Communication skills are essential to receive and share information. Then, you need visualisation skills to convey that information through models, PowerPoint presentations and, increasingly, 3D drawings and animations.

Because an architect works with an uncertain future, you’ll also need research skills to explore all the possible ways to achieve your goal.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – you need analytical skills. Modelling involves simplifying reality, so you need to be able to structure, group, classify, and order information to extract insights and give an overview of complex situations.

All these skills need to be applied and supported with the architect’s own creativity, and ability to solve problems by thinking outside the box.

Enterprise architect’s attitude and behaviour

Alongside broad and deep knowledge and skills, an enterprise architect’s attitude and behaviour are extremely important. Qualities like intellectual capacity and social skills can be trained to an extent, but are largely determined by natural aptitude.

So-called “soft skills” like persuasion, negotiation, teamwork and leadership can all influence the acceptance and success of the change process. However, the exact role – and the culture of an organisation – will have a strong influence on which make the biggest difference, and which architect is the best fit.

Next: the Novius Architecture Framework

This list of an enterprise architect’s knowledge, skills, and personal qualities might seem daunting – but that doesn’t mean that only the most experienced people can do it. Young people with the right basic skills and aptitudes can also work as an architect – as long as you’re eager to learn and use your analytical skills to pick up the right subject matter expertise.

It helps a lot if you have the support of a methodical approach like the Novius Architecture Framework, which combines models to describe the business design, and deliver proven insights.