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A sizing guide: when the architecture decisions in front of you need a dedicated owner, when a monthly function beats a hire, and when the truthful answer is nothing dedicated yet.
The question usually arrives backwards. Somebody senior asks whether the company should hire an enterprise architect, a job advert gets drafted, and six months later the role is either unfilled or filled by one person drowning under three jobs. The better question is how much architecture the estate needs, because the answer decides whether you need a hire, a function, a programme architect or nothing dedicated at all. This guide sizes it properly, including the answer nobody selling architecture will give you.
The short answer. Sizing follows the estate rather than the headcount. Below roughly fifteen systems and one delivery programme at a time, most organisations need decisions owned by the CTO plus a periodic independent review rather than anyone dedicated. Between roughly fifteen and fifty systems, or with a major programme running, you need an architecture function without needing a hire: with Intelance, a Virtual EA Department runs from £6,500 + VAT per month. Beyond roughly fifty systems a first permanent hire starts earning its keep, and beyond one hundred and fifty, or across divisions, you are building a team with an operating model. The bands are judgement aids from delivery experience rather than laws, and a QuickScan from £18,000 + VAT settles your own answer with evidence in ten working days.
Enterprise architecture is a decision discipline. It decides what you run, what it costs, what connects to what, what gets kept, merged and retired, and whether the estate can carry the strategy built on top of it. Those decisions exist whether or not anyone owns them. In organisations with nobody responsible, the decisions still get made: by whichever vendor demos best, by each project separately, and by the loudest voice in the room. So the question is never whether you need an enterprise architect. It is whether the architecture decisions in front of you are big enough to need a dedicated owner, and what kind of owner fits.
Nobody can list what you run. When the systems register lives in several heads and none of them agree, every following decision is a guess. Every project invents its own stack. Integration costs compound quietly until a simple change touches eleven systems. A cloud, ERP or platform decision is approaching. These are the most expensive decisions most organisations ever make, and the vendor will happily make them for you. Growth or acquisition has left duplicates. Two finance systems, three CRMs and nobody empowered to retire anything. The board has started asking what we run. The question arrives politely once, then arrives in an audit. AI plans are landing on an undocumented estate. AI initiatives inherit whatever data and integration reality exists underneath them, mapped or unmapped.
| Estate | What you need | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Under ~15 systems, one programme at a time | Decisions owned by the CTO or IT lead, with a periodic independent review | A QuickScan from £18,000 + VAT every year or two, and honesty that nobody dedicated is needed yet |
| ~15 to 50 systems, or a major programme running | An architecture function without a permanent hire | A Virtual EA Department from £6,500 + VAT per month, or ProjectEA from £45,000 + VAT embedded in the programme |
| ~50 to 150 systems, constant change | A first permanent hire, backed by a function so one person is never the whole discipline | Advertised salaries commonly £90,000 to £130,000 before employer costs, with a monthly function behind them from £6,500 + VAT |
| 150+ systems, or multiple divisions | A team with decision rights, forums and governance that survive delivery pressure | An operating model diagnostic from £18,000 + VAT, full builds from £95,000 + VAT |
The bands describe complexity rather than company size. A fifty person software firm running seventy systems needs more architecture than a five hundred person manufacturer running twenty, and a business heading into an ERP replacement needs programme architecture this year whatever its size.
None of this requires a heavyweight framework. TOGAF, the method maintained by the Open Group, formalises the discipline in full, and most organisations below enterprise scale need a fraction of it applied well.
A permanent enterprise architect is one person, and the role as commonly written asks for three: a strategist for the board, a designer for the programmes and a governor for the estate. One person covers none of those during holidays, notice periods and the months the seat sits vacant, and the good ones are hard to find precisely because the breadth is unreasonable. The full arithmetic of salary against service is set out in our guide to what enterprise architecture consulting costs in the UK, and the summary is that below roughly fifty systems a monthly function usually buys more coverage than a hire. The hire becomes right when the estate is large enough to keep one person genuinely busy on decisions rather than diagrams, and when a function exists around them so the discipline survives their departure.
Most organisations asking the question sit in the middle band, and the middle has three workable options. A QuickScan from £18,000 + VAT answers the sizing question itself: every system inventoried and scored in ten working days, with a board walkthrough that settles what level of ownership the estate needs. A Virtual EA Department from £6,500 + VAT per month runs the discipline on a named senior lead for eight senior days, from £11,000 for twelve and from £22,000 for twenty or more, covering the breadth one hire cannot. And where the need is really one programme, ProjectEA from £45,000 + VAT embeds senior architects for the duration and leaves when it ends. All three keep the register and the decisions in your own tools, so nothing walks out of the door with a leaver.
Do not start with the job advert. Start with the evidence: the QuickScan exists to answer exactly this question, because sizing an architecture need without an inventory is guessing with better vocabulary. Ten working days, from £18,000 + VAT, every system scored for cost, fit and risk, and a board walkthrough that ends with a recommendation you can hold us to, including the recommendation that you need less than you feared. Where the estate genuinely needs nothing dedicated yet, the sensible advice is a review in a year, and we put that in writing too. The wider practice is on our enterprise architecture consulting page, and our guide to what enterprise architecture is in 2026 covers the discipline itself.
Usually no. Below roughly fifteen systems and one programme at a time, the decisions belong with the CTO or IT lead, ideally checked by a periodic independent review. The signal to add more is complexity rather than headcount: duplicated systems, integration nobody maps, or a platform decision approaching.
As a judgement aid from delivery experience, a dedicated function starts paying for itself somewhere around fifteen to fifty systems or a major change programme, and a first permanent hire around fifty systems with constant change. The bands follow the estate rather than the employee count, and an assessment settles the answer with evidence.
They own the decisions about what the organisation runs: the systems register, what each system costs and connects to, what gets kept, merged and retired, the target the estate is moving towards, and whether programmes are building towards it or away from it. Where the diagrams matter, it is because a decision needed one.
In smaller estates, yes, and they usually should. The model breaks when the CTO’s delivery responsibilities crowd out estate decisions, which is visible when project choices start contradicting each other. At that point the CTO needs the discipline run for them rather than a rival: a monthly function from £6,500 + VAT keeps the CTO as the accountable owner with senior capacity underneath.
Advertised UK salaries commonly sit between £90,000 and £130,000 before employer costs, for one person’s coverage. A Virtual EA Department runs from £6,500 + VAT per month with a named senior lead and no gaps for holidays or notice periods. The full comparison is in our guide to enterprise architecture consulting costs in the UK.
Inventory first, opinion second. The EA QuickScan from £18,000 + VAT inventories and scores the estate in ten working days and ends with a sizing recommendation your board can fund, including the recommendation to buy nothing dedicated where that is the right answer.
Emmanuel Olatunji
Chief Enterprise Architecture Partner
Emmanuel founded Intelance in 2017 and has led architecture, AI governance, cyber and deal engagements across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Every Intelance engagement runs under his direction, and every guide he publishes comes from that work.
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