Implementing Architectural Thinking: A Case Study at Commerzbank AG

The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) has become well-established in many organizations and is continuously discussed in academic literature. However, EA's effectiveness beyond IT is limited. The paradigm of architectural thinking aims at reaching the 90% of an organization that is not related to IT. The paper contrasts the abstract definitions of architectural thinking with empirical case study data. We find that practice has developed implementations of these abstract definitions. However, we also find new characteristics of architectural thinking that have not yet been discussed in literature. Specifically, these are the role of decisions and the role of formal governance mechanisms.