What Most CIOs Don’t Realize - Inside IT, No One Built the Architecture
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Jul 4
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Before You Architect the Enterprise, Fix This Inside IT.
10 Critical Breakdowns That Still Derail Transformation
What Most CIOs Don’t Realize
Most enterprise architecture programs begin with IT — and most stop there.
The assumption is simple:
We’ve got systems mapped, applications inventoried, cloud strategies defined… surely IT is already architected.
But in reality, what’s often called “IT architecture” is little more than a catalog of tools, infrastructure layers, and governance slides.
What’s missing is structure (anatomy).
Not documentation — but a functional blueprint that explains how IT actually operates, scales, adapts, and fails.
Even within IT itself, the architecture hasn’t been built. And that’s why automation plateaus. That’s why transformation keeps stalling. That’s why CIOs struggle to answer a simple question:
“What happens if we change this?”
Here are 10 structural breakdowns we see again and again — across industries, geographies, and EA-certified teams:
10 Critical Structural Gaps Inside IT
1. No Internal IT Anatomy
Not a single IT category — whether Security, QA, Data Management, or DevOps — is modeled end-to-end across the six perspectives: Strategy, Process, Systems, Components, Implementation, Operations
The result? Even IT teams can’t explain how they work. They operate by habit, not by design.
2. Integration Dependencies Ignored
No live map shows how applications, databases, and APIs are interlinked — or where a failure in one system affects downstream logic.
Credit, Core, Risk, Reporting — connected only in diagrams, not structure.
3. No Componentization
Applications are treated as monoliths. No one has defined modular compoennets boundaries, how compoenents support a system? Reusable compoenent capabilities, or subcomponents. How these components are organized using six variables, interlinking between them
This means small changes carry enterprise-level risk.
4. No Timing or Exception Rules Modeled
System flows don’t capture:
SLAs
Delays
Retries
Timeouts
Escalations
Failures must be handled manually because the system never structurally expected them.
5. No Simulation Models
There’s no way to test what happens if a process changes. There’s no safe way to simulate risk, failure, or overload. Everything’s a live fire drill.
6. DevOps & QA Are Disconnected
No structural feedback loop connects:
Environment configurations
Test cycles
Deployment failures
Production incidents
Problems repeat — because architecture doesn’t explain how quality flows (or breaks) through the system.
7. Security Is Isolated from Architecture
IAM, DLP, audit logging — these are treated as separate compliance functions, not integrated elements of process logic or system design.
Security stays bolted on — never embedded.
8. No Rule Visibility
No one can answer:
Where does this decision happen? Is it in code? Workflow config? A data rule?
Without rule visibility, governance becomes reactive.
9. Legacy Hotspots Are Uncharted
Everyone knows where the tech debt is… informally.
But it’s not documented. Not mapped. Not structurally flagged. So it can’t be managed or retired — just avoided and feared.
10. No Value Traceability
If you ask:
How does this tech initiative affect a strategic goal? You’ll likely hear silence — or a guess.
IT architecture isn’t aligned to strategic intent. It’s mapped to projects, not outcomes.
Why This Isn’t Just an Oversight — It’s a Structural Risk
If your architecture doesn’t model how IT functions across strategy, processes, systems, components, rules, and operations, then it’s not architecture — it’s just indexing.
That’s why:
You can’t automate reliably
You can’t simulate risk
You can’t trace failures
You can’t scale excellence
And you can’t support enterprise decisions with confidence
The first fix isn’t a new tool. It’s a new mindset:
Even inside IT, the architecture hasn’t been built.
Until IT itself is modeled with precision, your EA efforts are starting from a weak foundation.
CIO and Chief Archtects can’t architect the enterprise if you haven’t architected your own house (IT).
