As advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to push enter­pris­es in the SAP ecosys­tem to mod­ern­ize their oper­a­tions, shift to cloud envi­ron­ments, and adopt AI solu­tions, the role of the enter­prise archi­tect (EA) is becom­ing increas­ing­ly vital. 

To dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from oth­er tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als and find suc­cess in such rapid­ly evolv­ing times, enter­prise archi­tects must not only ensure their tech­ni­cal exper­tise but ele­vate soft skills relat­ed to com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, ensur­ing that they can look at their busi­ness­es holistically. 

At the recent, three-day Next Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Sum­mit, host­ed at SAP’s North Amer­i­can head­quar­ters in New­town Square, Penn­syl­va­nia, three experts in enter­prise archi­tec­ture—Michele Krom, VP of Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture North­east at SAP, Clau­dia Fer­nan­dez, Direc­tor at Deloitte, and Whyn­de Kuehn, Founder and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at S2E Trans­for­ma­tion — ded­i­cat­ed a pan­el dis­cus­sion to explor­ing what lies ahead and the essen­tial skills that EAs need to excel. 

Inten­tion­al Busi­ness Design Amid Change

In guid­ing the dis­cus­sion, Kuehn first rec­om­mend­ed that enter­prise archi­tects ask them­selves a foun­da­tion­al ques­tion: ​“What are the forces of change that will impact this role?” 

One such change, she out­lined, involves the dis­ci­pline of busi­ness archi­tec­ture and how such a holis­tic frame­work for under­stand­ing and design­ing an organization’s struc­ture, process­es, and infor­ma­tion flows has become more rel­e­vant for enter­pris­es eager to align strate­gic objec­tives with oper­a­tional real­i­ties amid busi­ness transformation.

From grow­ing adop­tion of busi­ness archi­tec­ture prac­tices across orga­ni­za­tions to the way in which orga­ni­za­tions are then ingrain­ing those prac­tices to estab­lish a dis­ci­pline for more roles through­out the busi­ness, increas­ing aware­ness of the strate­gic val­ue that busi­ness archi­tec­ture can bring is open­ing the door for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion across companies. 

For exam­ple, busi­ness­peo­ple are increas­ing­ly turn­ing to busi­ness archi­tec­ture prac­tices when con­sid­er­ing strat­e­gy, exe­cu­tion, and trans­for­ma­tion in their roles, giv­en how frame­works can unlock syn­er­gies and dri­ve results.

“There’s oppor­tu­ni­ty to lean into inten­tion­al and inte­grat­ed busi­ness design,” Kuehn said. This goes beyond map­ping, instead also weav­ing togeth­er peo­ple, process­es, and tech­nol­o­gy in sup­port of those busi­ness mod­els and their strate­gic evolutions.

As a busi­ness scales, it can become frag­ment­ed in its design. Kuehn shared that there are oppor­tu­ni­ties to step in and design busi­ness­es more inten­tion­al­ly, through inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tion. ​“A true busi­ness archi­tec­ture flu­en­cy involves think­ing busi­ness first, not as an after­thought,” she said.

The enter­prise archi­tect can specif­i­cal­ly bridge the gaps between silos of a com­pa­ny, using an under­stand­ing of var­i­ous dis­ci­plines to bet­ter cre­ate an orga­ni­za­tion­al and expe­ri­ence design. ​“It’s almost a renais­sance set of skills to open our minds as archi­tects,” she said.

Krom added that, when enter­prise archi­tects can bring togeth­er mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines and dif­fer­ent points of view, they can view a solu­tion more holis­ti­cal­ly. ​“It’s all to make sure we’re look­ing at it from all angles and not miss­ing a per­spec­tive or miss­ing a view, so that what we bring for­ward is the best col­lec­tive prod­uct that we can,” she said. 

Knowl­edge shar­ing in a cul­ture also pro­duces excit­ed, engaged team mem­bers, the pan­elists reflect­ed, which can bring out the best in a busi­ness and add fur­ther val­ue. ​“When we put our heads togeth­er, we’re bet­ter,” Krom said. 

Soft Skills to Help EAs Excel

Through­out the Next Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Sum­mit, var­i­ous ses­sions addressed recent devel­op­ments in SAP tech­nol­o­gy, such as the announce­ment of SAP Busi­ness Data Cloud. As always, with new solu­tions rolling out, tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als must work hard to keep up with the pace of change.

“I felt a lit­tle bit of frus­tra­tion,” Fer­nan­dez acknowl­edged. ​“There’s anoth­er solu­tion? What do I do with my exist­ing land­scape? What does that mean for me?” Enter­prise archi­tects need to learn to be adapt­able to pro­vide those answers to busi­ness and IT stake­hold­ers alike in the face of con­stant­ly advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy, she said.

Fer­nan­dez empha­sized that an under­stand­ing of human psy­chol­o­gy is going to be increas­ing­ly nec­es­sary for those in the pro­fes­sion mov­ing for­ward. Par­tic­u­lar­ly since the pan­dem­ic, men­tal health aware­ness in the work­place has become a more promi­nent part of team dis­course at orga­ni­za­tions across indus­tries. Major dis­rup­tions — from the advent of work-from-home­/re­mote employ­ment to the imple­men­ta­tion of new soft­ware solu­tions — always bring about charged emo­tions in stake­hold­ers. ​“Being able to under­stand and com­mu­ni­cate in a way that is calm­ing and bring­ing in align­ment will require some under­stand­ing of psy­chol­o­gy,” Fer­nan­dez said. 

Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is anoth­er soft skill that will prove impor­tant, espe­cial­ly as it relates to sto­ry­telling, which is at the core of the EA profession. 

In the past, enter­prise archi­tects often worked with lit­tle infor­ma­tion housed across an orga­ni­za­tion in dis­joint­ed ways. But in the future, as orga­ni­za­tions move to the cloud and data becomes more cen­tral­ized, there will be too much infor­ma­tion at everyone’s fin­ger­tips, Fer­nan­dez said. The enter­prise archi­tect will need the prop­er skills to effec­tive­ly tell a sto­ry and sum­ma­rize infor­ma­tion suc­cinct­ly for exec­u­tive-lev­el stakeholders.

Krom echoed these sen­ti­ments. The enter­prise archi­tect is most suc­cess­ful in their role when they can influ­ence the busi­ness into mak­ing deci­sions that tru­ly align busi­ness needs with IT require­ments; ​“where we spend our time and ener­gy is going to require more of those soft skills” to accrue that lev­el of influ­ence, she said. Krom also empha­sized that research skills will take on greater importance. 

As arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence becomes more estab­lished in the tools that enter­prise archi­tects use, EAs will ben­e­fit from know­ing how to lever­age it in the moment. But they also need to have the research skills to ver­i­fy the out­put that AI mod­els pro­vide, rather than sim­ply trust­ing the algorithm. 

Devel­op­ing Tal­ent Accordingly

Fer­nan­dez added that the edu­ca­tion pro­vid­ed to the next gen­er­a­tion of EAs will need to change sig­nif­i­cant­ly in response to emerg­ing trends in the SAP ecosystem.

Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and prac­ti­cal edu­ca­tion, espe­cial­ly in uni­ver­si­ties, will be use­ful, the pan­elists agreed. Fer­nan­dez spoke of her per­son­al expe­ri­ence, hav­ing attend­ed high school in Bolivia; stan­dard­ized in the cur­ricu­lum were psy­chol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy, which she found to be help­ful for her career. Adding cours­es like these could sim­i­lar­ly enrich the skillsets of can­di­dates pur­su­ing high­er edu­ca­tion in North Amer­i­ca and Europe, she added. 

In the work­place, devel­op­ing SAP tal­ent should also con­tin­ue to be a focus. Fer­nan­dez advised dou­bling down on coach­ing, men­tor­ship, and appren­tice­ship to instill a mind­set and cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous learn­ing in emerg­ing professionals.

Kuehn echoed the impor­tance of prac­ti­cal edu­ca­tion around these con­cepts and rec­om­mend­ed archi­tec­ture hackathons, even for grade-school learn­ers, to intro­duce the idea of this career path ear­ly on. Apply­ing an archi­tec­ture mind­set to help oth­ers, and lever­ag­ing those busi­ness prob­lem-solv­ing skills from the cor­po­rate world to help social orga­ni­za­tions and ini­tia­tives to suc­cess­ful­ly start, scale and sus­tain, is a core aspect of Kuehn’s work at S2E Trans­for­ma­tion, where she refers to the con­cept as ​“archi­tect­ing for good.” 

Archi­tec­tur­al Tools

While many forces are con­tribut­ing to changes in the role of enter­prise archi­tects, the tools that EAs use to com­plete busi­ness tasks are evolv­ing in sur­pris­ing ways, and suc­cess in this field is also depen­dent on a cer­tain lev­el of cre­ativ­i­ty in deter­min­ing where to use emerg­ing technology.

When enter­prise archi­tects talk with busi­ness users to under­stand require­ments of var­i­ous plat­forms, one his­tor­i­cal school of thought has been to keep those con­ver­sa­tions at a high lev­el rather than div­ing deep into tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, Fer­nan­dez said. But neu­ro­science tools that UX experts lever­age prin­ci­ples and insights from to design bet­ter user expe­ri­ences can sim­i­lar­ly help to guide the think­ing of enter­prise archi­tects; con­sid­er­ing emo­tion and moti­va­tion, cog­ni­tive load, mem­o­ry, and oth­er types of neu­ro­science prin­ci­ples can help EAs think more deeply about what the end users need and want from their software.

Exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy such as dig­i­tal twins could also help enter­prise archi­tects to sim­u­late a future state of a company’s soft­ware stack and walk future end users through it — much more effec­tive­ly than a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, she added. 

Diverse Thought, Great Product

“We all believe in the pow­er of diver­si­ty and what it brings to us,” Kuehn told atten­dees, reflect­ing on her per­son­al expe­ri­ence of work­ing on a team of 100 busi­ness architects. 

When hir­ing for a cer­tain type of archi­tect who could do it all, the team actu­al­ly uncov­ered blind spots in their cri­te­ria for this envi­sioned role. Group­think got in the way of build­ing rela­tion­ships across the busi­ness that were required for tru­ly under­stand­ing what type of archi­tect could best serve the organization’s needs, she said, and part of that stemmed from a need to pri­or­i­tize prin­ci­ples of diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion into their approach to hiring.

Fer­nan­dez spoke also about coach­ing she has done for women pro­fes­sion­als, who have often said they feel like they’re at a dis­ad­van­tage in the work­place and still have to advo­cate to ensure they’re in the rel­e­vant meet­ings to advance their pro­fes­sion­al goals. ​“First of all, take a seat at the table,” she said. ​“Share your ideas. And lis­ten to oth­er people’s ideas. That’s how you get a seat at the table.”

One obser­va­tion the pan­elists dis­cussed is how dif­fi­cult it can be for young pro­fes­sion­als to get noticed at work. But as a young, female, Latin busi­ness pro­fes­sion­al work­ing in a paper mill in Cana­da, ​“I saw my being dif­fer­ent as an advan­tage,” Fer­nan­dez said. As such, she worked to active­ly cul­ti­vate rela­tion­ships and see her col­leagues as allies who could sup­port her suc­cess. Crit­i­cal to her work in this regard was being inclu­sive of all around her. 

“Yes, we can do diver­si­ty, and we need to have a place for every­one,” Fer­nan­dez said. ​“There’s enough work to be done out there, for all of us.” 

Krom echoed that a pos­i­tive mind­set is key, ask­ing ​“how many times have we let our­selves get in the way?” Bring­ing one’s best self to work is part of how com­pa­nies can come togeth­er to tru­ly make a difference. 

In the end, the enter­prise archi­tect should aim to lever­age diver­si­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion to help cus­tomers as much as pos­si­ble, she said.

Krom doesn’t only adhere to exact num­bers or KPIs on hir­ing for gen­der or cul­tur­al diver­si­ty, for exam­ple; instead, she approach­es team-build­ing from the per­spec­tive of ensur­ing dif­fer­ent points of view are rep­re­sent­ed and can be brought togeth­er. By main­tain­ing diverse skill sets and back­grounds on a team, the ide­al enter­prise-archi­tec­ture prac­tice can emerge. 

“It’s about cre­at­ing a col­lec­tive whole that is tru­ly going to be able to out­shine and pro­duce the great­est result for our cus­tomer, togeth­er,” she said.