The Formalization of Enterprise Architecture
The year I built the framework that would guide IT architecture for years to come
At some point in 2023, I stopped performing technical reviews and started codifying the discipline itself. I authored the organization's formal Enterprise Architecture Review Process — what triggers a review, how it's governed, how decisions escalate, how documentation has to be structured — and turned architecture review into a mandatory gate for any change to existing solution architecture. A requirement now, not a courtesy consultation.
I put that framework to work immediately, on projects where getting it wrong wasn't an abstract risk. On a SCADA-system review (as high-trust an engagement as exists in an industrial LNG environment, given what SCADA actually protects), I facilitated the session, explained architecture principles to reliability engineering, and drove the checklist to a real close. On a procurement-platform integration, I evaluated SFTP workflows and pushed for a consolidated, long-term design with SAP S/4HANA instead of the quick fix that would have been easier to approve.
By year-end I was functioning as the connective node between Information Risk Management, Applications, the Server Team, Procurement, SCADA/Instrumentation, and SAP, the one consistent reference across a set of teams that kept getting wider. Effectively, I'd become the architecture voice of the organization.
2023 in one sentence: I stopped doing the reviews and wrote the rule that requires them.