The Role of the EA Architect and ERM&G

by Robert N. Charette

From my perspective, EA architects are de facto chief risk officers for large portions of an organization's operations. The architect is the one who must make the risk-opportunity tradeoffs of individual EA components within the risk-opportunity profile of the EA as a whole. This architectural role seems to have been largely overlooked, however. In a recent Cutter report on what it takes to be a great enterprise architect (see "What It Takes to Be a Great Enterprise Architect" by Dana Bredemeyer and Ruth Malan), there was no mention of an architect needing to understand and manage risk effectively. Domain expertise, political acuity, strategic ability, and leadership were mentioned, but not risk management. Again, this view indicates why EA and enterprise risk management and governance (ERM&G) have not synched up in most organizations.