Top Questions on Evolving Roles of Enterprise Architects Post-COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has served to cause massive disruption across various industries. Businesses worldwide have had to deal with the ground realities of this new normal and have responded with varying degrees of success. Some companies have been forced to close down, while others have had to move exclusively to a work-from-home model.

Now, in this post-COVID world, a lot of roles have changed, bringing in new responsibilities and dictating the need to create and evolve new workflows. 

The role of enterprise architects has been refined in many ways by the pandemic. As your organization tries to recover from the impact of the pandemic, you must understand how your enterprise architects play a significant role in the recovery initiative.

Let us talk about some essential considerations to revisit the role of enterprise architects and evolve the role in the light of current needs and responsibilities. 

Asking the Right Questions

To understand how the role of an enterprise architect has changed and how it impacts your recovery effort, we need to start by asking the right questions. The answers to these questions can help create a concrete strategy for architects to facilitate the recovery effort and ensure that the organization can make it through the effects of the pandemic.

Here are 10 relevant questions:

1. Which are your most critical business capabilities?
2. How do disruptions to these capabilities impact the business?
3. What do these capabilities depend on? Who are the key suppliers and people involved? What are the processes and applications involved?
4. What are the risks specific to these people, applications, and processes?
5. Can you calculate the aggregate risk for each critical business capability?
6. Can you categorize these risks into those that require immediate mitigation and those that can be accepted or absorbed?
7. For the risks that require mitigation, what are your mitigation, continuity, and disaster recovery plans?
8. Are there any bottlenecks on the facilitation of remote work?
9. Are there any applications or business-critical processes that render remote access difficult or impossible?
10. Finally, can you figure out recovery time objectives for these identified business capabilities?

With detailed answers to these questions, your organization will get a better view of the way forward for enterprise architects in the aftermath of COVID.