The Art of the Work Package: Is it architecture or just really organized micromanagement?

Greetings, architects!

Welcome back to EA Struggles: The only newsletter that turns enterprise confusion into comedic catharsis.

The Main Story: The Work Package Paradox

Picture this: You’ve just emerged victorious from a stakeholder alignment meeting (which is to say, no one cried thistime). As you bask in the glow of consensus, your PM slides over and says, “Can you break this into work packages?” Suddenly, you’re not an architect. You’re an overworked air traffic controller trying to land deliverables in a fog of shifting scope and project managers with Gantt charts older than your career.

By lunch, you’ve divided a visionary multi-year architecture roadmap into 37.5 loosely coherent “work packages,” each one with its own Jira ticket, dependency map, and oddly specific deliverables (“Create interim transitional roadmap phase 2 slide deck – v0.9”).

Congratulations. You’ve mastered the ancient EA skill known as bureaucratic origami.

TOGAF to the Rescue (with a Raised Eyebrow)

TOGAF, bless its methodical heart, does indeed love a good work package. In the Architecture Development Method (ADM), work packages are the way we translate architecture visions into actionable steps within portfolios. Sounds empowering, right?

But here’s the kicker: TOGAF never said your work packages had to be a Russian nesting doll of overlapping responsibilities and budget battles.

Properly applied, TOGAF helps you:

• Group architectural building blocks (ABBs) and solution building blocks (SBBs) logically

• Avoid the “Excel Olympics” of over-granularity

• Align packages with capability increments — not just departmental politics

Educational Twist: Best Practices for Work Packages

• Start with outcomes, not org charts

• Tie packages to value streams instead of random task lists

• Use Architecture Contracts to clarify expectations early

• Review work packages iteratively in Phase G (Implementation Governance)

Let TOGAF guide the package party — just don’t let it become an unholy blend of micromanagement and deck proliferation.

Humor in Diagrams

Share Your Struggles

Ever created a “work package” so complex it needed its own glossary?

Share your tales of architectural agony and we’ll feature the best (or worst)!

Next Week’s Tease

PowerPoint Wars: Who really owns the slide deck, and is it a weapon of mass stakeholder confusion?