Can You Buy Good Architecture? It’s Not Just About the Money

We often hear that you can simply “buy” great architecture from a software vendor or system integrator. While this might benefit the vendor’s bottom line, it doesn’t guarantee a good fit for your organization. Countless failed projects attest to this.

Throwing more architects at the problem isn’t the solution either.

We actually have a fact base to back up this claim. If we take the enterprise architecture departments and split these into large architecture and small architecture activities (measured by the number of people working on EA (inside and outside IT) as percentage of total IT FTE) we have two groups that we can nicely compare in terms of their approach, effectiveness and efficiency. In the large group the average is 8% and in the small group 0.2%

Looking at these numbers it seems that throwing just resources at the problem is not the right solution. There is a very significant difference between the two groups when it comes to application decommissioning – but the smaller group actually decommissions more applications. Small departments are also further along on the transitions journey to microservices and they are more active in monitoring business benefits – which is a key success factors for running large projects.

Clearly there are a lot to activities – in particular when it comes to creating new artifacts where the large departments are better. They are also more focused on complexity reduction – but in the large group the percentage of people in the rest of that are not aware of what EA does is also higher.

(c) 2024, Henley Business School Analysis

While larger departments excel in creating artifacts and focusing on complexity reduction, they often struggle with communication and awareness within the broader organization.

So, what’s the secret to successful architecture? It’s not about throwing money at the problem. It’s about investing in the architects themselves. Our new survey focuses on understanding the skills and qualities that make architects truly effective.