Case SPA O20: Lost Your Chief Architect? How Software Platform Anatomy Preserves Architectural Continuity

Category: Organizational & People-Driven Change, Team churn, leadership shifts, missing documentation, reactive delivery.

Series: Rethinking Requirements: How the ICMG Enterprise Anatomy Model Makes Systems Change-Ready

Perspectives Covered: Strategy, Business Process, System, Component Specification, Implementation, Operations

Key Variables Impacted: Rule, Data, Event, UI, Function, Network

1. A Crisis No One Saw Coming

The Chief Architect has just left. All that’s left behind are a few outdated implementation diagrams, a deployment blueprint from six sprints ago, and a trail of emails marked “urgent”.

The diagrams are

• static,

• tangled in configuration and infrastructure details—

  • built from personal experience rather than business logic.

  • They don’t explain the why, just the how.

• No strategic intent,

• no system definitions,

• and definitely no link between business objectives and code.

  • The architectural picture is not just incomplete—it’s invisible.

Now the incoming Chief Architect has to decode the past, deliver on future releases, and keep customer commitments alive. All without a working model of the platform’s anatomy.

So what really happens when the Chief Architect walks out—and takes the architecture with them?

2. The Chaos Unfolds: Realizing the Gap

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