Traditional enterprise architecture is officially dead in companies such as Target or Best Buy that have seen their markets trampled by digital interlopers. The traditional processes are too slow and irrelevant in a fast-changing world, where keeping up is virtually impossible and getting ahead is seen as irresponsible daydreaming. The only answer is ditching the traditional EA frameworks and everything generally considered EA (e.g., business architecture, infrastructure architecture, application architecture, and data architecture) and instead turn back the clock and focus on the core fundamental idea underpinning EA’s initial invention: business-aligning technology strategy.
This shift back to strategy and holistic company-wide (enterprise) architecture has been made possible by the rapid evolution of product management, infrastructure, applications, and data, where product management replaces business architecture; infrastructure is now either an internal or external cloud; applications are being reduced to microservices or serverless architectures; and data is highly available and decentralized.
Joel Crabb walks you through how to restructure EA and explains where to focus its efforts to add maximum value to a business while supporting a software engineering culture. Although there are still areas where full enterprise alignment is necessary to multiply the impact of technology decisions, we must decide on a new name for this function, since enterprise architects need no longer apply.
Joel Crabb is the vice president of architecture and the chief architect at Target, where he has brought a platform mindset to the company’s software engineering teams and created a platform architecture wherein data and business processes are presented through platform APIs that serve the entire enterprise. Joel has over 20 years of experience building large-scale applications, both business and consumer facing. Previously, he was the chief architect at Best Buy, where he replatformed the company’s digital channel into a cloud-based distributed system to support growth from $1.8B to $5.1B in revenue over four years.
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thanks
The slide deck has been uploaded. Thanks.
Brian, thanks for the feedback. I uploaded the deck last week, it should appear here at some point. I’ll checkin with the organizers if it’s not appearing soon.
Great presentation. Would it be possible to get a copy of the deck?