How Do Architects Ensure Consistency?

Let’s take the example. One of the roles of an Architect is to establish the guardrails (or standards) by which the organization (enterprise, Train, Team) operates. However, we need to be careful that we say role is to just “establish guardrails”. This is a problem in that:

1. It is a negative job from the perspective of a Team or Train (ie architects say “no”).
2. It does not allow for creativity from the Teams (ie “we want to try this”)
3. It means Architects are a potential bottleneck (eg everything needs approval)
4. Its not too far from what people think of as Archtects do today (ie an ivory tower where commandments come from)

Instead of this approach, part of the new job of the Architect is to work directly with Teams to help them understand why the guardrails are in place and, as Teams work solutions, to work those new ideas into the guardrails and distribute those ideas to others.