Changes ahead for enterprise architects

Enterprise architects must change their skill set and adopt a different approach to the job if they want to be more highly valued within their organisation and help to drive real business value, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Speaking ahead of her keynote speech at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit in London later this month, distinguished analyst Betsy Burton told reporters that enterprise architects have garnered a bad reputation in many organisations by trying to push their decisions onto the business.

As a result, many enterprise architecture efforts suffer from a lack of business drivers causing 50 per cent to fail, according to Gartner research based on client interactions earlier this year.

"Enterprise architects need to change the way they work from trying to control the organisation to being trusted advisors and guiding people to working with them in a collaborative way," Burton argued.

The analyst added that trends such as the consumerisation of IT, and the growing complexity of business processes, are forcing organisations to change the way they do enterprise architecture, and the type of architect they are looking to employ.

"Enterprise architects in the past had specific process and technology skills, but now [firms are] looking for people who have empathy and the ability to foster innovation and creative thinking," she explained.