From Department-Specific EA to Industry-Specific EA to Enterprise Anatomy
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Why EA Never Escaped IT — and How It Finally Can
Evolution Path: EA (IT Only) → EA (Department-Specific – Sales / HR / Finance) → EA (Industry-Specific – Airlines / Airports) → Enterprise Anatomy From frameworks to structure to anatomy.
1. The Foundational Flaw: EA Lives Inside IT
For all its talk of “enterprise,” most Enterprise Architecture teams sit inside the IT department. Both “Business Architects” and “Solution Architects” report to the CIO.
So, despite the titles, both work within the same delivery mindset — budget cycles, tool stacks, and project deadlines.
That single placement decision has shaped two decades of confusion. It means every “architecture” conversation — whether labeled business, application, or data — begins and ends inside IT logic.
Until EA shifts its physical location out of IT, no framework, tool, or maturity model can change its mental location
And that logic is built for delivery, not diagnosis.
That’s why most EA dashboards still measure:
number of applications rationalized,
number of integrations completed,
number of systems aligned to “business capabilities.”
All useful metrics — but none describe how the enterprise itself works.
In short: EA became a mirror of IT, not of the enterprise. And that’s why, even after twenty years, CEOs still ask, “What does EA actually do?”
2. The Consequence: A Profession Trapped in Its Own Frameworks
When architecture reports into IT, its success metrics are IT metrics — uptime, standardization, platform consolidation. The discipline starts optimizing for governance rather than coherence.
Every “business capability map” becomes another way to catalogue systems. Every “target architecture” becomes a prettier diagram of the same fragmentation.
So even when architects say they’re “bridging business and IT,” they’re really just stitching together two IT perspectives — project portfolios and system blueprints.
That’s why digital transformation projects fail structurally, not technically. Each project automates a part; none models the whole.
That’s why the only way forward isn’t a better framework—it’s a structural relocation of architecture itself.
3. Shift 1 – Department-Specific EA: Re-anchoring Architecture in Value-Creating Functions
The first step out of this trap is to move architecture back into the departments that create value.
Department-Specific EA is where the enterprise first starts to show its internal design. Here we trace how each department actually works — not just which systems it uses.
For example:
In Finance, strategy (P1) defines capital policy; process (P2) defines approvals; logic (P3) defines reconciliation rules; operations (P6) execute payment runs.
In HR, strategy defines talent philosophy; process defines hiring flow; logic defines role classification; operations handle daily transactions.
In Sales, strategy defines market approach; process defines lead handling; logic defines pipeline scoring; operations close deals.
This structure — P1 through P6 — gives every department its own internal anatomy. But at this stage, each department is like a functioning organ in isolation — efficient locally, disconnected globally.
That’s the first awakening: EA can’t stay generic. It must descend into the anatomy of each department before it can rise to the level of the enterprise.
Departmental EA is where architecture first touches living tissue.
Once you can see each organ’s function, you’re ready to study the circulatory system that connects them—the industry layer.
4. Shift 2 – Industry-Specific EA: Discovering the Structural DNA
But recognizing these patterns isn’t the finish line—it’s the doorway to understanding how all organs share one structural code.
Once you look across many organizations in the same sector, patterns begin to appear. That’s the second evolution — Industry-Specific EA.
Every industry has a distinct structural DNA — a recurring set of departments, logic rules, and timing dependencies that define how it works.
In Banking, the structural spine runs from customer onboarding to credit scoring to regulatory reporting — a chain that must stay logically synchronized.
In Airlines, the anatomy revolves around time: aircraft schedules, crew rotations, and passenger flows all depend on one timing logic.
In Healthcare, the structure centers on continuity: patient flow, clinical workflow, billing, and insurance must align across departments.
At this level, architecture stops being descriptive and starts becoming comparative. You can benchmark structural soundness, not just operational maturity.
Industry-Specific EA is what allows you to say:“This hospital’s patient-care structure is 70% coherent across P1–P6, while this airline’s operations structure is 40% misaligned between P3 and P6.”
It’s not another framework — it’s structural literacy at scale.
But even here, architecture remains pattern awareness, not system integration. To move further, the enterprise must become one visible body.
5. Shift 3 – Enterprise Anatomy: Discovering inerent internal structure
Enterprise Anatomy is to organizations what the discovery of the human body was for its longevity and survival—a revelation of inherent structure, not a new technique.
It’s the point where you stop describing parts based on individual experience and start discovering and modeling what already exists and its relations.
Anatomy maps how intent (P1) transforms into action (P6) — through the six structural perspectives — across every department (D1–D15).
It’s not theory. It’s traceability. You can follow a single rule, decision, or process across departments and see exactly where it breaks.
For example:
Why a pricing rule written in Finance (P3) causes delays in Sales (P6).
Why automating HR onboarding (P5) fails to improve retention when the incentive logic (P1) is misaligned.
Why 180 “successful” IT projects can coexist with a structurally incoherent enterprise.
Once this anatomy is visible, the business vs IT debate collapses. Both become tissues in the same organism — the enterprise itself.
This is what EA was supposed to be all along. Enterprise Anatomy simply gives it a spinal cord.
Anatomy doesn’t create structure; it reveals it. Once revealed, the enterprise finally behaves like a coherent organism.
6. The Outcome: Architecture Returns to Its Original Purpose
When you operate from anatomy, governance fades and diagnosis begins.
CIOs no longer defend platforms; they trace structures.
CEOs can see the real map of how strategy converts into work.
Departments stop optimizing their silos and start functioning as one body.
Enterprise Anatomy doesn’t replace EA. It fulfills it — the way medical anatomy fulfilled medicine.
Doctors didn’t abandon healing when they discovered anatomy; they finally understood why healing works.
The same is true here. Once we can see the structure, we stop debating. We start diagnosing.
The day architecture steps out of IT and into the enterprise body, the discipline of coherence begins.
Evolution Path:
EA (IT Only) → EA (Department Specific) → EA (Industry Specific) → Enterprise Anatomy
From frameworks to structure to anatomy.