Enterprise Architecture Series: A Day in the Life of an Enterprise Architect, Between Strategy and Espresso

After a successful career as an Enterprise Architect, I'm excited to share the valuable lessons I've learned through a series of articles. My latest piece, "A Day in the Life of an Enterprise Architect, Between Strategy and Espresso" highlights how I applied my learnings in enterprise architecture to enable my organisation achieving its strategic objectives.

6:15 AM – The Architect Awakens

The alarm hums softly, and I don't rush. I’ve learned over the years that how you enter the day matters more than how fast you start. I take a few minutes in silence — not meditating, just listening — to my thoughts, my breath, and that subtle whisper of uncertainty that comes with navigating complex systems.

Enterprise Architecture isn’t just a job. It’s a posture — one of curiosity, systems thinking, and conscious intent.

With coffee in hand, I reflect on a question that grounds me every morning:

What are we really trying to change — and why now?

In this line of work, it’s easy to get trapped in the architecture of yesterday, maintaining models, processes, and capabilities that no longer serve the future. But real architecture lives at the edge — the intersection of what is, what could be, and what should be.

8:00 AM – Coffee #2 and Context Switching

The first scan of the inbox feels like stepping onto a moving train. The CEO forwarded an article about industry disruption in Asia-Pacific. The strategy team wants to pivot a major initiative toward customer-centric innovation. A DevOps leader needs advice on consolidating cloud providers.

This is not task management — this is environment scanning.

I start to sketch connections: How does this market trend tie to our platform strategy? Where does customer experience intersect with our business capabilities? What signals from the outside world should we act on before they become pressures?

Being a strategic EA means building awareness architecture — not just systems and standards, but the sensory mechanisms to detect, adapt, and respond before things break.

9:30 AM – The Workshop: Orchestrating Minds and Models

The workshop begins with hesitations and side-glances. Architects are often seen as the “framework police,” but I walk in as a facilitator of thought. The objective: align capabilities to strategic objectives. The reality: uncover misalignment, duplication, and buried assumptions.

We map business capabilities against the corporate strategy. At first, it’s just boxes and lines. But then we start to see narratives. Why is the "Customer Insights" capability owned by four different teams? Why does our transformation vision hinge on a capability we’ve never formally defined?

I encourage discomfort. Strategy doesn’t emerge from harmony — it emerges from tension and resolution. I pose questions, not answers:

“What would happen if we didn’t do this?” “Are we solving the right problem, or just the familiar one?” “What value would this capability deliver if it worked at its best?”

The room shifts. By the end, they’re not looking at me for direction — they’re looking at each other with clarity.

12:00 PM – The Power of Silence

Lunch is not a time slot. It’s an intentional reset. I don’t eat at my desk. I don’t scroll through emails. Instead, I step outside and get a little existential.

“Are we building an organization that’s adaptable, ethical, and meaningful — or just one that’s profitable?”

Architects aren’t just diagrammers of systems; we are stewards of change. And change without values is just chaos wearing a suit.

I remind myself that the role of architecture is not to document what is but to provoke what could be — and ensure it is designed with foresight, empathy, and integrity.

1:00 PM – Coaching: Planting Strategic Seeds

A junior architect joins me for a one-on-one. He’s technically brilliant, diagram-savvy, and ready to map everything to TOGAF yesterday. I slow him down.

“Before you diagram the architecture, understand the ambition.”

We talk about maturity assessments, but also trust dynamics. We explore modeling tools, but also modeling mindsets. I encourage him to think of architecture as language — not a fixed syntax, but a conversation that evolves depending on who’s in the room.

Coaching is part of my daily rhythm not because I have time, but because it’s the only way the discipline evolves. We don’t need more rule-followers. We need thoughtful architects who question the rules, understand their trade-offs, and lead with humility.

2:30 PM – Negotiation & Narrative: The Strategy Storyline

I walk into a meeting with the CIO and CFO. These aren’t just budget conversations. They’re narrative battles — between investment and risk, between today’s pressure and tomorrow’s vision.

I don’t bring a deck full of boxes and swimlanes. I bring a storyline:

“If we want to be a customer-led business, we need this capability. If we want that capability, we need this platform. And if we want the platform to deliver, we need the right people.”

I connect their world to mine. I show how every technical decision is a business decision in disguise. I show the cost of not aligning. And I make them the heroes of the transformation — because strategy that doesn’t include your stakeholders’ stories isn’t a strategy, it’s a spreadsheet.

4:00 PM – Thinking Time: Honouring the Craft

This is my most protected time block. No meetings. No messages. Just deep thinking.

I review our reference architecture. I update capability maturity heatmaps. I read a new research paper on digital twins of organisations. But more than that, I sit with the complexity.

“What’s the simplest way to express this complicated truth?”

I ponder a framework for ethics in AI enablement. I reflect on where we’re investing too much energy in governance, and too little in adoption.

This hour is where my value multiplies. It’s where I stop reacting and start designing. Where I stop fixing and start framing. Strategy isn't a document — it's a disciplined habit of critical thinking.

5:30 PM – Wrapping Up, Not Winding Down

I close the day not by clearing the inbox, but by writing tomorrow’s intentions. I track progress, but I also track alignment. Did today move us closer to purpose, or just productivity?

I reflect on the people I touched — not just their roles, but their realities. The data architect who’s burnt out. The portfolio lead who feels unheard. These are part of the system, too.

7:00 PM – Lego and Legacy

Dinner. Laughter. Bathtime negotiations with my son that rival vendor management calls. As he builds his Lego fortress, I smile. There’s architecture in this too — in the way we build trust, piece by piece.

Final Thoughts: Strategy in Motion

Being an Enterprise Architect is a privilege. Not because we sit at the intersection of business and IT, but because we sit at the threshold of potential.

We don’t just build the right things. We ask, again and again:

Are we doing the right things — and doing them right?

And we do it with curiosity, integrity, and the occasional double-shot espresso.

Connect with Mobin Barati for Enterprise Architecture, Business and Digital Transformation content.

#EnterpriseArchitecture #EA #EAM #EALife #ArchitectureBenefit #ArchitectureValue #Value #Benefit