Align people, not assets
Reproduced from a LinkedIn post on November 19, 2025
I recently took advice from a reading list and started Suzanne Kaiser's "Architecture for Flow". I've got many books on the go, so I skimmed the start to get a feel of where it sits on my priority list. A phrase caught my attention: "Architecture flow focuses on aligning the business architecture, the technical architecture…" and you might expect it to stop there, but it doesn't. It continues with "… and the team architecture to unlock blockers to flow and make the organisation more amenable to coping with future changes".
It immediately got my attention. When we obsess over alignment, it is about assets (think of every architecture health metric you've ever seen!). We've missed something vital and fundamental: aligning people.
Enterprise architecture has often obsessed over aligning capabilities, systems, and assets. We create maps, establish standards, and pursue integration. It's always been our rallying cry. I used to work for a consultancy that used it: "Business and IT aligned".
Yet, despite all this effort, the outcomes we promise rarely materialise. Flow fails, and by flow, I mean the smooth, continuous delivery of value from idea to production. So does the core purpose of alignment itself. Enterprise architecture aims to be the all-seeing, cradle-to-grave design consultancy that bridges strategy and execution.
In reality, those lofty aims often fall short. Strategy remains disconnected from delivery. Solutions emerge piecemeal. And the discipline, once regarded as essential, is losing ground because it cannot consistently deliver what it promises.
Consider some of the most ambitious transformation programmes. The UK NHS National Programme for IT aimed to standardise systems across the health service. Technically, the architecture was sound: common platforms, shared standards, and integrated capabilities. Yet the programme collapsed after years of effort. Many factors contributed: politics, complexity, and procurement. One recurring theme was resistance from clinicians and local teams who felt excluded from decisions. When people aren't aligned, even the best technical design struggles to take root.
Or consider large ERP rollouts in global corporations. These projects often promise efficiency through harmonised processes and shared platforms. But when local teams see the change as imposed rather than co-created, adoption falters. The architecture looks elegant on paper, yet the human system pushes back. Similarly, cloud migration initiatives sometimes stall not because the technology is flawed, but because teams lack clarity on roles, trust in governance, or confidence in new ways of working.
None of these failures can be reduced to a single cause. Transformation is complex, and diagnoses are often oversimplified. But a pattern emerges: when we focus on aligning assets and overlook aligning people, their relationships, trust, and shared purpose, the architecture cannot deliver flow or the strategic outcomes it promises.
Susanne Kaiser's Architecture for Flow argues that socio-technical systems thrive when business, technical, and team architectures are aligned. And frameworks like Team Topologies remind us that architecture isn't just about code or platforms, it's about cognitive load, communication paths, and interaction modes. Teams are the real architecture. When we design for people, technical flow improves naturally.
These ideas are not new, as many of us see architecture as a connecting role, fostering cohesion where organisational tendencies seek to undermine it. But what is new, and perhaps an admission, is that primarily, we are aligning people's systems.
Next time you draw a capability map, ask: how are the people connected? Where is trust built? How do teams interact? Align the people, and the architecture will take care of itself. Next time you are aligning assets, challenge whether that is missing the point; the assets may be aligned with an expression of need, but do they align with, and enable, people and more importantly, do you?
