Architecture that slows down delivery is bad architecture.

Part one, Let’s start, short and sweet.

For years, I’ve worked at the intersection of product, platform, and enterprise architecture. I’ve seen firsthand how well-intentioned frameworks and governance models can become disconnected from the real work. Actually, slowing things down, not speeding them up.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

What I call Outcome‑Driven Architecture is my answer to that disconnect. It’s not a new framework or tool, like Gartners BODEA or BOC Group. It’s a shift in how we approach architecture, from a focus on completeness to a focus on iterative clarity, from complete alignment to granular business acceleration.

In short, we shift from focusing on what exists to what matters.

It’s about treating architecture the same way we treat products: with accountability, iteration, and impact in mind.

It’s how we stop optimizing for perfect diagrams and start optimizing for real outcomes.

Is this only for “the Business”?

If you’re an engineer or engineering leader, you’ve likely felt the tension: You’re responsible for delivering fast, safely, and at scale. On top of that, you’re most likely (in larger organisations) often left navigating unclear ownership, overlapping systems, and technical decisions disconnected from any business context. Pretty standard.

This is exactly where Outcome‑Driven Architecture helps.

By grounding architecture in capability models, lifecycle stages, and business value, we create visibility that engineering teams can actually use:

• to build the right thing (and only the right thing),
• to argue for platform investments with confidence and facts,
• and to reduce noise across teams by aligning ownership and accountability (and reduce that all-too-familiar feeling: “surely someone built this already?”.

We’re not slowing you down with more process. We’re speeding you up by removing ambiguity.

Also, one of the most frequent, and palpable, friction between traditional business SMEs and departments collaborating with software engineering teams is what iteration means, in practice. Many of the cross-organisation collaboration I’ve facilitated or contributed to has that element of unsettled misalignment between “ship fast”, “target state”, “MVP”, “benchmark”. In short, misalignment due to speaking different languages.

In my experience, this is also where Outcome-Driven Architecture supports.

By conversations being focused on a language both worlds understand, we can start iterating on value, without breaking the concepts in either.

• Shared or connected metrics
• what processes and value are needed for Business
• What’s the impact in development of strategic choices

Again, not slowing down, but speeding up.

In the next mini-article, I’ll walk through how we’ve started putting this into practice:

• from mapping capability maturity to driving alignment across domains,
• from clarifying platform investments to connecting architecture work directly to company OKRs.

It’s not about central control. It’s about building a shared map—so everyone can move faster, together.

Stay safe & Thanks for reading 👍

/M