Ask ten enterprise architects what maturity looks like and you’ll get at least ten different answers. Some want to fix the basics: brittle platforms, slow delivery, a business that doesn’t trust them. Some want to prove value in terms the CFO understands. Some are asking a more existential question: what kind of architects do we actually need to be right now?

Of course, none of them are wrong.

The standard response is to reach for a framework. But frameworks assume maturity is linear and that you move through levels, accumulate capability, and eventually arrive somewhere. That assumption doesn’t hold when a CIO under delivery pressure wants completely different things from EA than a CFO scrutinizing spend, or a CEO pushing for growth. The goal posts keep moving because the starting question keeps changing.

Forrester’s Architecture Value Tool starts somewhere different. Not “how mature are you?” but “what are you trying to optimize for right now?” The tool works through three lenses and the interesting thing is they all draw from the same underlying architecture actions. So you’re building just one roadmap that you can explain in three different ways.

Lens 1: High-Performance IT — When Credibility Comes First

This lens is essential when EA’s credibility is fragile. EA cannot claim strategic influence it hasn’t earned. Operational value comes first.

Under the High-Performance IT lens, maturity is about strengthening alignment, trust, and adaptivity principles serving HPIT styles. EA leaders filter their architecture practices to those that directly reinforce the IT styles (enabling, amplifying, cocreating, or transforming) that business needs most, then sequence them into a realistic roadmap based on effort and timing.

Lens 2: Business Outcomes — When Value Must Be Explicit

For EA teams struggling to be heard by business or finance leaders, this lens reframes maturity as economic relevance, not architectural completeness.

Under this lens, maturity is measured by how clearly EA contributes to results stakeholders recognize: cost reduction, risk management, CX/EX/DX improvement, and business growth or mission reinforcement. Architecture activities directly map to outcomes defined in Forrester’s outcome-driven enterprise architecture model. The roadmap becomes a value narrative — current-state work shows what EA already contributes; future-state investments show how that contribution grows.

Lens 3: EA Archetypes — How The Practice Must Evolve

EA teams use this lens to decide how their practice must adapt as technology and business demands shift — before they get bypassed.

Under EA archetypes lens, maturity is reached by sequentially addressing technology, solution, capability, and business focus. Each archetype builds on the last. The lens clarifies who EA serves, what roles architects play, what services the practice delivers, and how it operates.

One Tool, Three Stories, One Coherent Roadmap

Whth this tool, EA maturity stops being a score on a model and starts being a deliberate choice about what “better” means for your specific context, and your specific stakeholders:

  • To IT leaders: as a High-Performance IT journey.
  • To executives: as a business outcomes story.
  • To the EA team: as a deliberate evolution of the EA practice.