The Accidental Architect

Ralph Webster
June 13, 2025

Hello again, architecture aficionados!

This week’s tale is dedicated to those brave souls who innocently offered to “help fix the SharePoint site” and somehow ended up leading a digital transformation initiative with five steering committees and zero compensation.

The Main Story: How It All Spiraled

It starts with a casual “Can you help with the SharePoint permissions?”

You think: “Sure. It’s just a few clicks. I’ve got five minutes.”

Three weeks later, you’ve been added to seven Teams channels with names like EA-Gov-2025-Plan-Draft-2-vFINAL, and you’re presenting a target architecture to executives who think “capability mapping” is a kind of GPS feature.

Now your LinkedIn title reads “Enterprise Architect (interim, unofficial, unsupported)” and your calendar is a horror movie of overlapping governance meetings, framework reviews, and urgent Slack messages like:

“Hey, can we just rubber-stamp this $3M SaaS migration by EOD?”

All because you once knew what a taxonomy was.

TOGAF to the Rescue (Kinda)

The good news? TOGAF understands your pain.

The bad news? TOGAF assumes you volunteered for this.

But here’s your lifeline:

Preliminary Phase: Legitimize your accidental empire by setting some actual scope. Define what the architecture function is, is not, and will never be (like fixing the Wi-Fi in Meeting Room B).
Architecture Governance Framework: Use this as a polite way to say “No” without saying “No.”
“Oh, that request? Hmm, not in the governance framework. Let’s review it next quarter.”
Stakeholder Management: Identify the exec who thinks EA stands for “Extra Admin” and the one who still uses Lotus Notes. Both are flight risks. Handle accordingly.

Educational Twist: From Bystander to Backbone

Own the Accidental Role — If you’re already wearing the cape, take control of the origin story.
Define Architecture Principles — Even if it’s just “No, we can’t build another duplicate HR portal.”
Set Boundaries Early — Architecture without boundaries is just corporate chaos in UML form.

Humor in Diagrams

Have you been promoted by accident?

Reply with your best “I just offered to help and now I own the roadmap” story. We might feature it in our next issue!

Next Week’s Tease

Get ready for:

“The Agile Mirage” — when the daily standup lasts 90 minutes and no one stands.