Intellyx BrainBlog for BiZZdesign by Jason Bloomberg
Up Your Architecture Game to ‘Change Expert’
Digital transformation is unlike previous business transformation efforts insofar as there is no fixed final state – no point in time where the people involved can look up and say, ‘well, that’s done.’
Rather, digital transformation means transforming the organization from having less agility to having more agility. In other words, being able to deal better with change overall.
Fundamentally, digital transformation requires that organizations adopt change itself as a core competency.
Makes sense, except that the devil is in the details. What does it mean for change to be a core competency? What does the organization have to do in order to achieve such a capability? And perhaps most important of all, who should drive the transition?
The answer may surprise you. The people best suited to effect the transformation to a more agile organization are the architects.
Placing Architecture into Context
It’s notoriously difficult to pin down the role of an architect in a typical enterprise. First of all, there are many types of architects: solution architects, data architects, enterprise architects, software architects, business architects, and more. All of these roles focus on different activities and require different expertise.
That being said, some architects are quite technical, often rolling up their sleeves and serving as a kind of senior developer. Other architects place themselves squarely in the realm of the business, helping to translate business needs into guidance for technical teams.
To be sure, architects often have a hand in helping their organizations change, but typically on a project-by-project basis. In other words, a typical architect will help envision and formalize the final state of some initiative, and then move onto the next project once that initiative has reached a certain level of maturity.
Given the fact that change must become a core competency in digitally transformed organizations, however, today’s architects must up their game. Simply designing a final state, be it a data model, a cloud configuration, an infrastructure plan, or an IT portfolio, won’t adequately position their organizations for change.
