The Foundational Architecture Roles And How They Are Changing

Forrester described six foundational architecture roles in the organization report of the enterprise architecture practice playbook, which we published June 8, 2012. Since then, Forrester has published a body of research on digital business and the imperatives of digitizing customer experience and achieving digital operational excellence. Digital business significantly influences how enterprise architecture (EA) is done — and that includes the roles and competencies of EA practices. We've reviewed the descriptions for the six architecture roles: business, information, application, infrastructure, solution, and enterprise, and we still find them relevant for today. However, the two imperatives of digital business lead to the rise of two new hybrid roles. This report provides an overview of these six traditional roles and describes these two new hybrid roles.