# Enterprise Architecture

> Lean, decision-oriented enterprise architecture for CTOs and CIOs: the four domains, current-to-target state, capability mapping, principles and decision records, and governance that enables speed rather than gatekeeping it.

*Source: https://www.lazlosoftwaresolution.com/guides/enterprise-architecture*

**Enterprise architecture (EA)** aligns an organisation's business strategy with its systems, data, and technology — deciding deliberately how they fit together so the whole estate can evolve. Every technology choice (build or buy, where the source of truth lives, how systems share data) is an architecture decision; EA is the discipline of making them coherently instead of by accident.

Modern EA is **lean and decision-oriented**, not ivory-tower documentation. Its output is better choices, captured as Architecture Decision Records; its direction is a target state plus a short set of principles that let teams decide without asking permission. It spans four domains — business, data ([data engineering](/guides/enterprise-data-engineering)), application ([integration](/guides/enterprise-integration-patterns)), and technology ([cloud](/guides/enterprise-cloud-migration)) — and governs the seams and the shared, leaving everything else to teams.

Security and compliance are architectural properties here, inherited by every team — the enterprise view of [application security](/guides/enterprise-application-security). A Lazlo [Architecture Review](/architecture-review) maps current state against a strategy-aligned target and turns the gap into a prioritised roadmap.