The State of Enterprise Architecture Report 2023

By Bizzdesign

New Research Reveals: Mature Enterprise Architecture Practices Give Organizations a Performance Edge

Bizzdesign, an Enterprise Architecture SaaS vendor, has published its third annual research State of Enterprise Architecture 2023 report. According to the report, mature enterprise architecture practices can significantly enhance an organization’s agility and ability to make well-informed business and technology decisions.

The study surveyed almost 1,000 enterprise architecture practitioners across different industries and organization sizes, revealing a 5.8 times maturity gap between the top quartile Leaders and the bottom quartile Laggards.

Enterprise architecture Maturity Leaders reported three times higher organizational agility and were three times more confident in the strategic benefits delivered by their practice compared to Laggards. Furthermore, Bizzdesign’s report provides nine key insights, including how enterprise architecture teams are under-resourced and that improving the communication of enterprise architecture’s value to the business remains the top improvement priority for organizations.

The report highlights 9 key findings:

1. Increasing demand for enterprise architecture services: Sixty-two percent of respondents said that demand for enterprise architecture services had increased in the past year. Of these, 17% said that demand had increased significantly.
2. Enterprise architecture teams are under-resourced: Sixty-four percent of respondents said their enterprise architecture team was under-resourced or severely under-resourced. Seventy percent of respondents described hiring and retaining enterprise architecture talent as challenging.
3. There’s a maturity gulf between high and low performers: Analysis of self-assessment scores revealed a 5.8 times maturity gap between the top quartile “Leaders” and the bottom quartile “Laggards.”
4. Enterprise architecture maturity leaders claim an organizational agility advantage: According to respondents, organizational agility is three times higher for those with top quartile maturity than those with bottom quartile maturity.
5. Enterprise architecture maturity leaders deliver superior benefits: Compared to laggards, leaders were nearly three times more confident that their practice delivered numerous IT and strategic business benefits.
6. Most enterprise architecture teams still struggle to provide strategic business outcomes: Only 26% of respondents fully agreed that their practice delivered strategic benefits, including improved organizational agility, identification of innovation opportunities, improved CX, and faster time to market.
7. Selling enterprise architecture’s value to the business remains the top improvement priority: Asked to identify their top three improvement priorities to increase enterprise architecture’s impact at their organization, “Improving the communication of enterprise architecture’s value to the business” came first with 55% of respondents.
8. Stakeholder engagement is higher among enterprise architecture maturity leaders: Maturity leaders are more than twice as successful at increasing stakeholder engagement and consumption of enterprise architecture insights compared to maturity laggards.
9. A capable enterprise architecture management platform improves the value of deliverables: On average, those happiest with their enterprise architecture tooling were 44% more likely to agree that their enterprise architecture deliverables were current and relevant to support change compared to those least satisfied with their tooling.

The findings clearly show that mature enterprise architecture capabilities are fundamental to organizations’ ability to make well-informed business and technology change decisions. Moreover, organizations with the most mature enterprise architecture capabilities were least likely to highlight that their enterprise architecture teams were under-resourced.

The enterprise architecture maturity advantage

At the heart of the report is Bizzdesign’s model for assessing enterprise architecture maturity and its impact on business performance.

The results show that compared to Maturity Laggards, Maturity Leaders:

• Assess their organizational agility 3 times higher;
• Are more than 2 times as successful at increasing stakeholder engagement;
• Are nearly 3 times more confident that their practice delivers significant IT benefits, such as improved IT investment decisions and rationalized less costly application portfolios;
• Are nearly 3 times more confident that their practice delivers strategic business benefits, including improved business investment decisions and improved compliance and risk management.

The report also highlights how practitioners most satisfied with their enterprise architecture tooling are more successful at driving increased engagement with senior business stakeholders.

Download the full report for more information here.

About Bizzdesign

Founded in 2000, Bizzdesign is the trusted global SaaS Enterprise Architecture platform and recognized as a leader by major analyst firms. We help the world’s leading public and private organizations assure the success of investment prioritization, transformation initiatives, and risk management. Bizzdesign helps architects and executives see a full multi-dimensional picture, find, and design the right path and confidently execute their targeted future. Success should not be a matter of hope. It should be by design. For more information, visit bizzdesign.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.