The PowerPoint Wars: Architects’ Favorite Battlefield

Greetings, Slide Generals!

This week we charge into the bloodless yet brutal battlefield where enterprise architecture is fought not with frameworks—but with fonts, flowcharts, and slide transitions.

The Main Story: The Deck of Doom

It began, as all great disasters do, with a meeting invite:

“EA Strategy Alignment Review – Bring Decks”

Three days, four caffeine overdoses, and seventeen template revisions later, you’re standing in front of the steering committee with a 72-slide magnum opus. You’ve aligned strategy, capabilities, and technology… but the only question from the CFO?

“Can you make Slide 4 pop more?”

Meanwhile, the marketing team shows up with a five-slide deck featuring stock photos of mountain climbers and the phrase “Digital Synergy” in Comic Sans. Applause. Standing ovation.

The battle intensifies when the infrastructure lead sneaks in a Visio export in 6pt font, and the Product Manager overlays sticky notes in real-time using Miro. The CIO wants Gantt charts. The CTO demands ArchiMate. The HR rep wants animation.

You? You’re just trying to explain how a service-oriented architecture works… without dying inside.

TOGAF to the Rescue (With Slide Notes)

TOGAF doesn’t include a PowerPoint module (yet), but it does preach viewpoint-driven architecture—and that’s your secret weapon.

Rather than creating one deck to rule them all, use tailored views for different stakeholders:

• Capability map for execs

• Solution overview for IT

• Data lineage for compliance

That way, you architect the narrative just like you architect the enterprise: with purpose, reuse, and fewer boomerangs transitions.

Educational Twist: Slide Smarter, Not Harder

Here are three TOGAF-inspired survival tactics for your next PowerPoint war:

• Use Architecture Views, Not Just Pretty Slides

  TOGAF’s concept of stakeholder concerns means you can justify why a diagram exists.

• Standardize Templates Across Teams

  Bring governance to your graphics—it helps avoid 14 fonts and 3 logos per deck.

• Archive Key Views in the Architecture Repository

  A good diagram should outlive the slide it was born on.

Humor in Diagrams

Share and Connect

What’s the worst slide you’ve ever had to present?

Reply with a screenshot (we’ll anonymize!) or a one-liner. Winner gets eternal architect glory (and maybe a mug).

Next Week’s Tease

The Politics of Prioritization: Making everyone happy since never.