It’s no good having a strategy if you can’t execute on it.
This year, for our fifth annual State of Enterprise Architecture report, we quizzed organizations on their ability to bring about change. In particular, we focused on how well they understand their capabilities and their insight into IT sustainability. We also asked about how they invest, and what the barriers to executing strategy are.
Respondents assessed their enterprise architecture maturity on seven criteria. We then worked out an average score and ranked the results. The top 25% of organizations we named “leaders”, and the bottom 25% are “laggards”. More than 500 enterprise architecture professionals and their colleagues took part.
We found that leaders invest more strategically, have a better understanding of their capabilities, and are way ahead in IT sustainability.
Download the State of Enterprise Architecture 2025 Report.
To successfully transform an organization requires a good understanding of its capabilities today and how they need to change in the future. Capabilities are things that the organization does or can do, regardless of how they’re done. For example, “product development” might be a high-level capability, while “prototyping” might be a capability under it. The idea is that the entire organization can be described in terms of its capabilities, without overlaps or gaps.
There was a high degree of confidence that organizations could understand their business capabilities today. Just over half of organizations rated their understanding as good, and 25% said it was very good. 43% have a good vision for future capabilities, and 29% said they had a very good vision.
However, a third of organizations have a poor or very poor ability to analyze the gap between today’s capabilities and those required to meet business goals.
In contrast, 88% of leaders said their ability to analyze the gap was good or very good. They were also significantly more likely to describe their understanding of today’s capabilities and the future required capabilities as very good.
Only 28% of laggards have a good or very good ability to analyze the capability gap, and only 39% had a good or very good vision for future capabilities.
See the State of Enterprise Architecture 2025 report for more details, including data on how well organizations understand the contribution that transformation projects, technology, and people make to business goals.
Ethical organizations are working to reduce their environmental impact and are reporting on their progress. IT sustainability is increasingly a priority.
As the graph below shows, nearly half of leaders fully agree they understand the sustainability of their IT assets, compared to 25% of everyone and just 13% of laggards.
Sustainability information is only valuable if it’s easily available where it’s needed. We asked respondents whether they had integrated sustainability metrics with their business transformation planning tools. More than half (51%) have not, and only 13% fully agree they have.
However, more than a third of leaders (34%) fully agree they have integrated the required sustainability metrics into their business transformation tools, much higher than the 5% of laggards who have.
We gave respondents a free text field to describe their biggest barriers to executing strategy, and we then analyzed and classified the results.
You might not be surprised to find that money was the top theme. Although some spoke about economic pressures generally, many cited concerns with budgets, funding, and cashflow.
Culture was also a top barrier, with many talking about an unwillingness to try new things and change.
The third most frequently named barrier was management. There was a range of gripes, including their understanding of technology, their sluggishness in making decisions, and their lack of strategic direction.
It was encouraging to see that only 7% cited challenges with enterprise architecture and business architecture. This suggests that enterprise architecture and business architecture are not significant barriers to change.
Our survey found that money concerns are the biggest barrier to executing strategy. Demand for investment is usually greater than the available funds, so we asked respondents to tell us how budgets are allocated.
There was consensus that investments are often allocated based on regulatory requirements, who is most influential in the business, and what works for one part of the business.
Just over a third of respondents (34%) fully agree that investments are prioritized that contribute the most to strategic goals, with about half (48%) somewhat agreeing.
In comparison, fifty-six percent of leaders fully agree that projects are prioritized that contribute the most to strategic goals. Only 14% of laggards fully agree that investments are prioritized that contribute the most to strategic goals.
The State of Enterprise Architecture 2025 also reveals:
Download your free copy of the full report.
Marc Lankhorst
Marc is Managing Consultant & Chief Technology Evangelist, Bizzdesign. He contributes to Bizzdesign’s vision, market development, consulting and coaching on digital business design and enterprise architecture. He also spreads the word on the Open Group’s ArchiMate® standard for enterprise architecture modeling, of which he has been managing the development. His expertise and interests range from enterprise and IT architecture to business process management and agile methods.
