Enterprise Architecture Current State Assessment

The Standards Exist. The Question Is Whether Anyone Follows Them.

The Enterprise Architecture Current State Assessment is a scored self-assessment — roughly 100 questions across 16 dimensions — built to distinguish an EA function that is genuinely shaping technology decisions from one that is producing artifacts nobody consults.

Enterprise architecture has a specific failure mode: it can look healthy and be irrelevant. The standards are published, the reference architectures exist, the review board meets. Delivery teams route around all of it, and nobody says so out loud because the artifacts are technically in place.

Assessing headline outputs will not surface that. The revealing questions are about influence and consumption — whether an architecture decision has ever changed a delivery plan, whether the application inventory is trusted enough to be used in a budget conversation, whether teams consult the standards before designing or after being told to.

This assessment is built around those questions. Roughly 100 of them across 16 dimensions, scored, producing a profile that separates the dimensions where the function is strong from the ones where it is merely present.

It is an instrument you run rather than content you customize — and it works best when you are prepared not to like the answer.

What an Assessment Settles That an Opinion Does Not

Three conversations get easier once the function has a profile rather than a reputation.

Whether the function is consumed or merely staffed. Adoption is the dimension EA functions most often over-rate about themselves. Asking directly whether an architecture decision changed a delivery outcome in the last quarter produces a more useful answer than counting artifacts published.

Which dimension is the actual constraint. A function with excellent standards and no engagement has a different problem from one with strong relationships and no repository. Both feel like "we need more capacity" from the inside, and they need opposite responses.

What a new architecture leader has inherited. Scoring in the first weeks of a role produces a baseline before you become the person accountable for it — the only window in which the read is genuinely impartial.

Why Assess Now Rather Than Later

EA functions are under two simultaneous pressures: justify the cost, and absorb a wave of technology change that arrived faster than any governance cycle.

AI Adoption Is Happening With or Without Architecture

Teams are shipping with generative tooling now. Whether architecture is shaping those decisions or discovering them afterwards is a measurable property of the function, and one worth knowing before it hardens into a pattern.

Application Portfolio Data Is Being Asked to Carry Weight

Cost programs increasingly lean on the application inventory that EA owns. If the inventory is not trusted, that becomes visible in a very public way. Better to score its quality deliberately.

Governance Cycles Are Getting Shorter

A review cadence designed for annual planning does not survive contact with teams shipping continuously. The dimensions around governance and engagement are where that mismatch shows up first.

Scores Are Comparable to Themselves

Run annually, the same instrument shows movement. That is a weaker claim than an external benchmark and a considerably more honest one.

What Is Included

Two files, both editable:

Who This Is Built For

There is a companion Business Architecture Current State Assessment covering the BA practice on the same 16-dimension structure. The two overlap on governance and engagement and diverge sharply on everything technical. If your remit covers one, buy that one.

How to Put It to Work

• Score the function across all 16 dimensions and read the profile, not just the total.
• Separate the dimensions where the function is strong from those where it is merely present.
• Build an investment case in dimension-level terms a sponsor can evaluate.
• Re-run annually to show movement against your own baseline.

Where Functions Typically Start

What You Are Actually Buying

Building a credible assessment instrument is harder than it looks. The questions have to be answerable honestly by people with an interest in the answer, and the dimensions have to be distinct enough that a profile means something.

• The structure is the work. Sixteen distinct dimensions with roughly 100 questions distributed across them, already balanced.
• It is editable, not locked. Cut what does not apply and add what does — the scoring survives the edit.
• It is repeatable. The same instrument run annually is what turns a one-off score into a trend.

Those first two columns describe what comparable efforts tend to involve, not a quoted benchmark — your figures will depend on scope and who does the work.

Built From Real Engagements

We are software entrepreneurs and business consultants who have delivered business architecture and transformation work across financial services firms. The dimensions and questions come from that work rather than from a published maturity standard — which is also why they carry the opinions and limits described below.

An Honest Note on Fit

This is a self-assessment. That is its main strength — run it whenever you like, as often as you like — and its main limitation, which is worth being clear about before you buy.

Where an independent read matters more than a repeatable one, our consulting team can run an assessment on a paid basis instead.

Specifically:

Terms You Should Know Before Purchasing

Read the description above in full before you buy. Delivery is immediate and the files are yours to keep, which is also why we cannot take returns, issue refunds, or swap a purchase for a different product once it has been downloaded. What you receive is what is listed — no warranty beyond that, and no bundled customization, implementation help, or support. A Enterprise License covers everyone inside one organization; if you intend to reuse the material across several clients, the Consultancy License is the one you need. The full digital product terms govern the sale.