Enterprise Archaeology: The Art of Unearthing the Truth in Architecture Modeling

As archaeologists use brushes, sieves, and carbon dating, enterprise architects must establish their own toolkit for careful excavation. While significant emphasis is placed on mining information from information systems (e.g., CMBD, Log Files, etc.), the reality is that there is still a considerable need for personal interaction. Various types of engagement exist to not only gather the necessary facts but also to help build consensus and understanding. These include:

• Interviews with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Often the most reliable source of up-to-date, nuanced insight. However, finding the right SME can take as much digging as the facts themselves.
• Workshops and collaborative mapping: These sessions help surface tacit knowledge and reveal the relationships between processes, systems, and stakeholders.
• Surveys and automated discovery tools are useful for gaining a broad picture, especially in large organizations, though they rarely replace the need for deeper qualitative engagement.
• Organizational ethnography: Observing how teams work, communicate, and make decisions can be as revealing as any system diagram.

Culture plays a central role in determining what information is accessible and how it is communicated. Just as some ancient societies left behind stone inscriptions while others recorded on biodegradable materials, certain departments within an organization preserve knowledge meticulously, whereas others rely entirely on oral traditions—quick chats, tribal knowledge, or MS Teams messages that vanish into the ether.

Language also matters. In one group, "architecture" may mean infrastructure. In another, it's synonymous with business strategy. Without clarifying terms, two teams can converse and leave with entirely different understandings.

Understanding these cultural dynamics is essential. The best enterprise architects don't just collect facts—they build relationships, learn the dialects of different domains, and become fluent in the organizational vernacular.

One of the most sobering lessons of enterprise archaeology is that there is no single source of truth—only multiple sources of partial truth. Reconciling these differences is part of the architect's job. This means embracing ambiguity, documenting assumptions, and being transparent about confidence levels in the data.

And just as archaeologists publish their findings with annotations, interpretations, and degrees of certainty, architects should model with commentary, context, and constraints—helping stakeholders understand what is represented and why it was captured that way.

The challenge of fact-finding in enterprise architecture is not a problem to be solved once and for all; it's a continual process of discovery and reinterpretation. Architects can approach their work with curiosity, patience, and rigor by thinking like archaeologists. They can uncover hidden patterns, give voice to marginalized insights, and construct models that honor both the visible structures and the invisible forces that shape an organization.

Ultimately, enterprise architecture is not merely about systems and processes; it's about stories. Every good archaeologist knows that the truth lies in the layers.