Stop building for years; start serving today
We recently came across a thoughtful post about balancing “Showing Quick Wins” and deliver on long-term benefits within the field of enterprise architecture. It makes a solid point: Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a strategic, long-term endeavour.
However, many EA teams and consultancies fall into a recurring trap: mistaking long-term for long-time. The two are not the same!
Focusing solely on the long-term vision while delivering little short-term value to stakeholders is both a trap and a misconception. This is a recipe for quick disengagement and, ultimately, failure. Let us reframe this using what we may call the “kitchen principle” applied to enterprise architecture.
Imagine you have invited stakeholders to a dinner party. They arrive hungry and hopeful. But instead of serving food, you say:
“We just need to assemble the kitchen first. It will only take a few days.”
Suddenly, it is no longer a party; it is a project. Some guests may leave before tasting anything of value. This is often how enterprise architecture feels to stakeholders in the hands of the wrong advisors and implementers.
Business leaders expect support, insights, and momentum; they look for help to reduce complexity and grow revenue, cut unnecessary costs, and improve risk and compliance reporting. Instead, they receive PowerPoints, frameworks, and diagrams about what might happen in some years time, if they invest significantly more time and resources.
Unsurprisingly, this approach leads to the failure of the architecture function ; and sometimes to the replacement of its EA leadership. But it does not have to be this way!
Today, you do not need to build the kitchen from scratch to make it usable. With modern, ready-made services like Next-Insight, onboarding to classic EA use cases is quick. In other words, you get a fully equipped kitchen; ready to start cooking from day one! EA should serve up meaningful results quickly:
- Clear ownership and decision insights — who controls which applications and integrations?
- Strategic alignment — co-create and collaborate with end-users to prioritise structured change.
- Reduced waste in the application landscape — define the consolidation roadmap and start delivering savings.
- Technology rationalisation — remove unnecessary costs and retire outdated platforms in favour of modern cloud solutions.
These are the first meals that build trust and credibility. They keep stakeholders engaged while the long-term strategy simmers in the background.
Once you have demonstrated an EA function as a structured knowledge base supporting key decision-processes; leaner, more automated, more collaborative – you showcase the return on investment (ROI).
As we discussed in our recent post; the goal is not to say no, but to guide towards future savings and relevance without neglecting current needs.
Rather than slowing the business with bureaucracy, EA should guide, enable, and accelerate collaboration.
To summarise: The kitchen will always evolve, but your guests will always arrive hungry. Serve them something quickly that is worth coming back for, while you prepare even more refined dishes. EA programmes with the right tooling should follow the same principle — do not wait for every ingredient to arrive if your main stakeholder is already at the table. Offer them a glass of something, a few bites to enjoy, and soon after, deliver something that provides the first return on investment. Every course builds the trust that will carry you to your long-term vision. In a good Michelin restaurant, you receive many servings — and you certainly do not wait years to get them. This is how you win Enterprise Architecture (EA) today.
We are here to guide you on your EA journey. Book an introduction here.
If looking for a a modern EA practice with modern EA SaaS, take a look at our offerings; Next-Insight is the safe and innovative choice for managing business architecture and EA all in one portal.
