The Diesel vs Petrol Mistake of Enterprise Architecture
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Oct 4
- 4 min read
If we keep calling diesel..as.. “petrol”.. for 25 years, eventually everyone forgets the difference. New drivers grow up believing both fuels are the same. Mechanics adapt their vocabulary. Fuel stations relabel the pumps. And when engines begin to stall, no one suspects the label — they blame the driver, the mechanic, or the car design itself.
That’s exactly what happened with Enterprise Architecture across the world.
Who Changed the Labels
It wasn’t regulators or policymakers. It was IT consultants, consulting firms, and outsourcing vendors who systematically rebranded IT governance as Enterprise Architecture. Over time, the entire ecosystem — job postings, certifications, delivery centres, and consulting practices — adopted the wrong label.
The Job Ads Lied
Across industries and continents, job postings for “Enterprise Architects” began to describe something else entirely:
Manage APIs, integration standards, and data platforms.
Oversee Azure or cloud migration projects.
Maintain Jira boards, DevOps pipelines, and governance documentation.
Enforce architectural standards and review compliance artefacts.
In title: Enterprise Architect. In reality: IT project governance.
The job market became the world’s largest fuel station — pumping the wrong substance into the system and convincing a generation that EA meant managing technology, not defining and operationalizing enterprises.
When the Wrong Fuel Enters the Engine
At first, the car still runs. Projects deliver. Dashboards glow green. Governance boards meet regularly. Everything looks fine — until performance starts to fade.
Just like engines running on the wrong fuel, enterprises begin to show subtle but unmistakable symptoms.
Who Notices Something Is Wrong?
Business Leaders (Drivers): They realize digital transformation projects never truly transform. Every initiative looks like the last one — new technology, same structure. The car moves, but slower, and at a much higher cost.
Enterprise Architects (Mechanics): They spend their time managing governance boards, integration standards, and Jira backlogs. They feel the problem, but the entire industry has told them this is Enterprise Architecture.
Enterprises (Manufacturers): They see rising delivery costs, slower innovation cycles, and declining competitiveness. Despite years of EA investment, structural agility never materializes.
Economies (Ecosystems): Global IT spending keeps climbing — projected to exceed $5.1 trillion in 2025 — yet productivity growth from digital initiatives stagnates. The system consumes more “fuel,” but travels fewer miles.
Symptoms That Diesel ≠ Petrol (EA ≠ IT Governance)
Engines stall: Digital programs don’t scale; pilots never become enterprise solutions.
Fuel economy drops: IT budgets grow, but revenue impact remains flat.
Engines wear out: Transformation teams burn out managing governance paperwork instead of building new business models.
Reputation declines: EA is seen as a slow, bureaucratic layer instead of a value driver.
And yet, everyone keeps refilling with the same fuel — saying, “We are practicing Enterprise Architecture.”
Consequences Across the Ecosystem
For Consumers (Drivers)
Banks modernize apps but not customer journeys.
Automakers digitize dashboards but not mobility ecosystems.
Governments digitize forms but not citizen experiences.Consumers experience new interfaces, not better outcomes.
For Enterprises (Manufacturers)
Banking: Architects maintain compliance dashboards while fintechs redefine financial services.
Automotive: Captive centres optimize cost while new entrants design software-defined vehicles.
Energy: Global energy firms digitize reporting, not renewables integration.
Telecom & Retail: IT teams improve billing systems while competitors design customer ecosystems.
The world’s best engineers are busy maintaining pipelines, integrations, and compliance dashboards instead of designing the structure of the enterprise itself.
For the Global Economy (Fuel System)
On average, 40% of global IT budgets go toward compliance and governance tasks.
75% of technology spending is consumed by maintenance and “keep-the-lights-on” functions.
Less than 25% of budgets are used for structural innovation or enterprise design.That imbalance explains why global productivity gains from digital transformation have been far below expectations.
The world spends more than ever on technology — yet gets less structural change in return.
Why Nobody Questioned It
Because the system adapted. Consulting firms, training bodies, and recruiters all aligned to the wrong label.When job descriptions, certifications, and delivery practices all reinforce the same definition, the mislabelling becomes invisible.
Even genuine architects began to believe that governance was the goal.After years of hearing the same message, the industry forgot what real architecture was supposed to do.
The Real Lesson
Once a label takes hold, it doesn’t just change vocabulary — it reshapes the entire ecosystem around it. The pumps, the training manuals, the engines, the hiring standards — everything adjusts to the wrong assumption.
For 25 years, the world has been fuelling its enterprises with governance dashboards, certification programs, and agile ceremonies, all labelled as “Enterprise Architecture.”
The engines still run — but slower, costlier, and with less power every year.
Correcting the Label
It’s time to relabel the pumps.
Enterprise Architecture is not governance. It is Enterprise Anatomy — the design of how a business operates, connects, and scales from P1 Strategy → P6 Operations across D1–D15 departments.
It’s what ensures that the enterprise engine runs on the right fuel — clarity, structure, and purpose.
The next 25 years must not repeat the last 25. We need to stop calling diesel ..as .. “petrol” — stop mistaking IT governance for Enterprise Architecture — and start fuelling enterprises with the structural intelligence they were always meant to run on.
From Wrong Fuel to Right Design
The real challenge now isn’t to assign blame — it’s to realign. The last 25 years taught us what happens when the wrong fuel runs the system.
The next 25 must be about rebuilding the engines correctly — with Enterprise Anatomy as the design blueprint.
The Enterprise Anatomy Diagnostic Series will do exactly that. It will:
Examine how organizations in banking, energy, manufacturing, telecom, retail, and government can reconnect P1 Strategy → P6 Operations across D1–D15 departments.
Show how structural misalignments — created by decades of “EA = IT governance” — can be corrected at the level of process, logic, and operations.
Offer a new lens for leaders, architects, and decision-makers to see their enterprise as an integrated organism, not a collection of disconnected systems.
The world has spent enough time arguing about frameworks and certifications. Now, it’s time to reclaim the architecture of the enterprise itself —to design, not certify; to integrate, not govern; to grow, not just control.
Welcome to the Enterprise Anatomy era. Where the right design finally meets the right fuel.
