Enterprise Architecture Value Model - Recognize the signals that indicate a Level 2 posture

Enterprise Architecture Value Model

Chapter 17. Recognize the signals that indicate a Level 2 posture

Your architects are actively present in delivery programs but in an advisory capacity — they do not hold formal accountability for delivery outcomes.
Architectural guidance is followed more often than at Level 1 but still inconsistently, particularly when delivery timelines are under pressure.
Your architecture function has strong technical credibility with delivery teams but limited organizational authority with program sponsors and business stakeholders.
When architectural recommendations are overridden by delivery decisions, the recourse is documentation of the override and continued advisory engagement — not a mechanism that produces timely resolution.
Your architecture function is invited to initiative planning and design sessions but not to the executive conversations where initiative priorities and investment decisions are made.
Architecture roadmaps are produced and published, but their execution depends on the cooperation of delivery teams over whom architecture has no authority — making them difficult to maintain and easy to deprioritize.
When asked to account for its contribution to specific delivery outcomes, your architecture function can point to the advice it gave but not to the decisions it made or the outcomes it owned.