Ask 10 enterprise architects what maturity looks like, and you’ll get at least 10 different answers. Some want to fix the basics, such as brittle platforms, slow delivery, or 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 architect 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 an enterprise architect than a CFO scrutinizing spend or a CEO pushing for growth. The goalposts 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 that all draw from the same underlying architecture actions. This enables you to build just one roadmap that you can explain in three different ways.

Lens 1: HPIT — When Credibility Comes First

This lens is essential when enterprise architecture’s credibility is fragile. Enterprise architecture (EA) can’t claim strategic influence that it hasn’t earned. Operational value comes first.

Under the high-performance IT (HPIT) lens, maturity is about strengthening alignment, trust, and adaptivity principles that serve HPIT styles. EA leaders filter their architecture practices to those that directly reinforce HPIT styles (enabling, amplifying, cocreating, or transforming) that businesses need 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 the 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 that stakeholders recognize: cost reduction, risk management, experience improvement (this could be either the customer, employee, or digital experience), and business growth or mission reinforcement. Architecture activities directly map to outcomes defined in Forrester’s Outcome-Driven 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 the 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

With 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 an HPIT journey
  • To executives: as a business outcomes story
  • To the EA team: as a deliberate evolution of the EA practice