Where should the Chief Enterprise Architect sit within the organization? The two most common places where you will find Enterprise Architecture is either reporting into the CIO or into one of the direct reports to the CIO – like the head of application development.
In the data from the Enterprise Architecture Survey with more than 300 participants we see CEO-2 and CEO-3 as the two dominant reporting locations – which make up around two third of the population.
There are however also around 10% of the companies where Enterprise Architecture is reporting directly into the CEO and around 25% where the Chief Architect sits even lower in the organization.
Why does it matter where Architecture sits within the organization? From practical experience it mainly boils down to two factors:
- Budget for talent acquisition: In most organizations the reporting level will have a substantial impact on the budget that is available for the salary of the chief architect and his team. You will only very rarely encounter companies where you could pay a CEO-5 employee the same salary as someone on CEO-2 level. In a competitive talent market this results in a lower skill level for the architecture team.
- Standing and seniority: Partially as a direct consequence of the lower skill level and partially due to a different standing due to the fact that the position is buried deeper in the organization architecture will have a weaker stand and a harder time getting in front of senior stakeholders and engaging with them.
Based on the survey data we see a significant drop in CXO-level interactions as soon as architecture reports on CEO-3 level or below.
While it does not matter on a statistically significant level if the architect reports directly into the CEO or into CEO-1 the level of CXO-interaction is significantly lower for CEO-3.
In my personal experience the CEO-2 head of architecture is someone that could very well become the next CIO. It is a senior person that has a strong leadership mandate and works closely with the CIO. The CEO-3 profile on the other hand is usually a rather technical person that supports the head of application development and has little interaction with the C-level. Quite often these profiles also miss the experience and do not have the mindset in going head to head in a discussion with senior stakeholders.
Here is my recipe for reverse-engineering the reporting level of Enterprise Architecture in your organization:
- Identify one of the most controversial architecture topics that affect the C-level directly (such as no customization in the Finance and HR domain)
- Pick the most senior, hostile and outspoken stakeholder affected by this decision (like the CFO)
- Think about people’s profiles (irrespective of their architecture knowledge) in your existing organization that would be able to manage such a discussion in a professional and objective way.
- You don’t want to hire below the level of these people – now think about the necessary hierarchy level to satisfy the needs of such a profile for architecture.
Quite often you will end up hiring a rather senior leader – which is in line with findings I wrote about earlier that it is far less the size of the team rather than their experience that makes up a good architecture department.