Enterprise Architecture Roles and Responsibilities

There are several roles that are pertinent to enterprise architecture, as well as to architecture at the team/program level. Remember that these are roles, not positions. Small organizations may have a single person taking on every one of these roles whereas a large organization could have dozens of fine-grained positions. Remember, context counts. We define the following roles for Disciplined Agile^® (DA^™) enterprise architecture:

• Enterprise architect (EA). Enterprise architects are responsible for envisioning, communicating, and evolving an organization’s enterprise architecture. The enterprise architecture addresses key enterprise aspects – including organizational structure, business processes and strategies, value streams, data and information, and supporting technologies – and how they fit together and are expected to evolve over time.
• Chief enterprise architect. The chief enterprise architect, or chief EA, leads the enterprise architecture team within your organization. This person is typically an enterprise architect with additional leadership responsibilities.
• Architecture owner (AO). An AO guides teams, in particular solution delivery teams, in architecture/solutioning decisions. AOs will work closely with enterprise architects and may even be in both roles. AO is a team-level role and are sometimes called agile solution architects or simply agile architects.
• Chief architecture owner (CAO). A CAO is a program-level role, leading the architecture efforts across a program. CAOs are typically senior AOs with leadership responsibilities. CAOs work closely with EAs, and may also be an EA.
• Specialized architect. This is a “meta role” for architects who focus on a specific aspect of the enterprise architecture. Table 1 lists potential specialized architects that may exist within your organization.

Table 1. Types of specialized architects. 

• Disciplined Agile (DA) mindset
• Enterprise Architecture
• Ways of Thinking (WoT)