Does your role profile reflect what you actually do?

For a long time I have been intrigued and curious about: –

1. How well an EA role profile reflects what an EA ultimately does?
2. And how challenging it can be for hiring managers to find the perfect fit.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve posted a couple of posts on Linkedin to get some further insight from a couple of polls.

1. As an Enterprise Architect does your role profile reflect what you do?
2. For all those who have or are looking to recruit Enterprise Architects, what has been the most challenging for candidates to demonstrate.

The results of the first poll on role profiles has closed and I will come back to the second poll in future articles.

Does your role profile reflect what you do?

This poll ran for a week and generated over 50 responses from around the globe.

On a positive note 53% of respondents suggested that their role profiles fully or partially reflected their day job.  For those in this group that’s great news – it suggests the organisation and the person doing the role are aligned.

It would be good to explore the extent of partially in the responses but for now I see this response as a positive.

However, 46% said their role profile rarely or never matches their actual job— which could be suggesting misalignment between organisations and employees. I wonder if other professions with clearer roles face the same issue.

What questions do these results pose?

It got me thinking, if this represents Enterprise Architects as a whole, what should we do. Are there some further insights that we would need to explore? Here are some thoughts: –

1. Given that 46% of respondents suggested there is misalignment is there an industry wide challenge that may need to be raised? What can the 46% learn from those who are aligned?
   
   
2. If you too, find yourself in the 46% are you up to discussing this discrepancy? Are there any practical steps that you could take to quickly get more aligned? Or would you be fearful that the role could be reprofiled and the role of an Enterprise Architect may no longer exist?
   
   
3. Would becoming more aligned provide greater benefits for the business and increase the satisfaction of those of you in Enterprise Architecture roles? Would it be worth uncovering the root cause of the misalignment and taking the necessary interventions to bring them more in line?

If you were to ask ChatGPT what the call to action of this insight might trigger it may come up with the suggestion: –

Do we, as Enterprise Architects, need a clearer industry-wide role definition? Should we be advocating for better alignment?

But does this sound like it could be a suggestion of a committee that would have spent three hours debating whether to use “clarity” or “alignment.” Is it too vague and overly polished?  In an ironic way, is this the question that many would expect an Enterprise Architect to suggest, given many other responses to challenges that they face.

Instead, is there another way?

We must acknowledge the impact of this misalignment on the Enterprise Architecture Profession, and the Industries, Businesses and Teams we work in, including, ultimately, our own satisfaction? We must have the leadership conversations that matter, to better define our role.  And as a profession we must be striving for 60-80+% of Enterprise Architects’ profiles to match the reality of their day.

Are you up to the challenge?