Enterprise Architecture Has Never Been Stronger

In a recent report coauthored by Stéphane Vanrechem and myself — Enterprise Architecture Continues To Solidify Its Role In Modern Organizations, 2025 — we examined four years of Forrester survey data across large end-user organizations. The results indicate that enterprise architecture, for all of its history and missteps, is no longer oscillating between relevance and rejection. It has settled into a durable, institutional role inside modern enterprises.

A Billion-Dollar Market — And Growing Faster Than Inflation

This analysis builds on research Stéphane and I published earlier showing that enterprise architecture is now a billion‑dollar‑per‑year market, growing faster than inflation. That finding alone is suggestive. But revenue growth can lag reality. Markets sometimes expand even as practices weaken. To evaluate EA’s enterprise traction, we have been pursuing a parallel line of research in our Modern Technology Operations Survey (active now for four years).

Two Simple Questions, Four Years Of Evidence

To evaluate architecture in the IT and digital context, we have focused on two concrete indicators over the past four years.

First: Does your technology organization offer architecture job titles?

Across enterprise respondents, the “yes” answer has risen steadily year over year from 64% to 76%. This is a significant trend reflecting increasing commitment to architectural roles within technology organizations — even as delivery models, tooling, and organizational boundaries continue to evolve.

Second: Does your organization have a named architecture operating unit?

Here again, the trend is clear. “Yes” has increased steadily from 46% to 69% over the same period.

These results reinforce one another. Organizations are not only retaining individual architects; they are formalizing architecture as an enduring organizational capability.

The Third Signal: Declining “Used To Have Architecture” Responses

In our survey, respondents can answer an alternative version of the second question: that they previously had an architecture unit but no longer do. For enterprises over four years, that response has declined consistently year over year to an all-time low of 16%.

Taken together, these trends tell a clear story: Fewer organizations are abandoning EA after trying it. The churn narrative — “we tried EA, got rid of it, had regrets, brought it back, etc.” — is becoming less common, not more. And in this, modern organizations are responding to structural necessity. They face persistent, cross‑cutting demands:

These problems do not disappear when architecture functions are weakened. They compound. That’s why so many organizations suffered through the pendulum. Architecture overstepped, was abandoned, and then … Something Bad happened, and EA was revived — chastened and with a better appreciation of its proper role, hopefully.

Some Organizational Design Context

Ultimately, the problems associated with enterprise architecture are not unique to EA, or even to IT. Enterprise architecture should be understood as one contemporary manifestation of a much older organizational dynamic: the division between line (immediate operational delivery) and staff (advisory expertise and coordination) responsibility.

Seen through this lens, enterprise architecture’s recurring challenges are less about EA itself and more about how advisory functions earn and sustain legitimacy in environments driven by operational urgency. Staff organizations generally are prone to bureaucratic dysfunction. The “department of no” and the line manager or commander “waiting for orders from HQ” are recurring memes. Architecture is just another variant.

But ultimately, in large organizations, such line/staff tension is not a pathology to be eliminated; it is a structural and persistent condition to be managed. Variants of this tension have shaped human organizations since the earliest forms of large-scale enterprise.

Conclusion

My conclusions here remain provisional and contingent on the attitudes and behaviors of architects themselves. The pendulum may have stopped … for now. But to quote Peter Drucker, “The change leader […] puts every product, every service, every process […] on trial for its life. And it does so on a regular schedule.”

Architecture is not, and cannot be, exempt. Whether EA survives or the pendulum starts up again is on you. The counsel is simple but not easy:

Retain a sense of humility.
Stay out of the ivory tower.
And above all, keep renewing that critical line of sight to your organization’s mission and outcomes and ask yourself every day how you are supporting them.