Vusa Nyathi

Why do so many IT projects fail, or not live up to expectations? Is it the divisive dichotomy between business and IT that affects decision-making? Or do they fail because enterprise architects don’t create the value expected from the project, or at least don’t properly orchestrate technology, processes, and people? What if economic logic is applied to the architectural practices and decisions from the outset? I’ve heard enterprise architects make comments like: "We just make recommendations, but it’s up to the business to decide." These architects will only make technical suggestions, and aren’t considering the economic logic that the business needs. And any suggestions they do make may be lost in translation.

Of course, many architectural decisionsor suggestions have a semblance of implicit economic logic to them. But all too often, what’s missing is a common business language that both IT and business leaders can understand and evaluate. Without this common language, the architectural decisions will be about things like technical feasibility and system integration, missing crucial value-based reasoning. The laws and principles of economics will always be at play in business, whether one is aware of them or not. These principles can be viewed as mental models for the architects to reframe their approaches and practices.