Five Steps to a Minimum Viable Enterprise Architecture

Close to Business

Maintaining close communication with business stakeholders is the only way to understand where a minimum viable EA can best help the business and to secure ongoing funding as needs evolve.

At Carrier Global Corp., CIO Joe Schulz measures EA success with business metrics such as how application quality or service interruptions affect employee productivity.

Schulz uses LeanIX‑generated reports to map ecosystem interconnections and identify redundancies or gaps, enabling smarter decision‑making across the organization.

Stretto CTO George Tsounis recommends using EA to build trust and transparency by informing business leaders about current IT spend and misaligned areas.

Trim Bureaucracy

Lengthy questionnaires and template‑driven interviews are common but unpopular in EA work; practitioners advise eliminating any questions that do not provide essential information or allow user feedback.

AWS Enterprise Strategy Director Gregor Hohpe suggests shifting from heavyweight, one‑way EA processes to simpler, faster, iterative conversations with business users.

State Street’s global chief architect Aman Thind simplifies EA by asking precise, relevant questions, cutting review time by at least half.

Thind also recommends removing massive ignored‑standard lists, holding reverse‑engineered review meetings, and avoiding heavyweight tools that generate unused artifacts.

At Vault, Shi finds New Relic’s observability tools valuable for accelerating EA work by providing instant visibility into the entire architecture.

Shi introduces new terms and processes, such as “website report,” to define key requirements like transaction volume and workflow types, and replaces one‑time decision‑locking processes with “development assumptions” that can be confirmed or adjusted.

During application launches, Shi avoids generic project plans, opting for a “specific macro‑ordering plan” built around milestones (alpha, beta, validation) that defines business success metrics at each stage.

Right Scope

Taking on too much in a minimum viable EA project leads to obsolescence; taking on too little fails to provide a comprehensive view of technology and business.

Gartner analyst Nolan Hart defines appropriate EA scope as the smallest set of deliverables (views, reference models, design patterns) that ensure timely, compliant delivery.

Shi advises considering the entire stack—from UI to API linking systems to data architecture—rather than isolated components.

Appropriate scope also applies to EA organization: Carrier creates centers of excellence for key functions, providing a simplified foundation for rapid innovation without evaluating each department’s platform separately.

If a small group isn’t interested in a minimum viable EA project, match the demand with the EA team’s skills to identify three to five services that can deliver business outcomes.

Establish and Enforce Standards

Tsounis stresses implementing design principles that prioritize simplicity, avoid over‑design, maximize reuse, leverage existing patterns, and use cloud‑based services.

Thind highlights reference architectures in security, data governance, production management, and deployment best practices as ready‑made scripts for building robust, compliant, composable applications.

Hohpe notes that overly strict standards can hinder innovation, citing an example where a team chose XML over a faster protocol because the architecture team required it.

Start Somewhere

Appointing a chief architect signals the importance of architecture and instills disciplined behavior for building efficient, innovative IT organizations.

Starting a minimum viable EA can begin with a simple inventory to identify overspend, such as duplicate applications or redundant contracts, which can yield significant benefits even with minimal effort.

Ensuring the right tools are used, standardized, and following best practices can dramatically impact the bottom line, reduce technical debt, lower support demand, and enable faster innovation.

Source: https://architect.pub/5-steps-minimum-viable-enterprise-architecture