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Being an Enterprise Architect is not a walk in the park, in fact, often it is more complicated than breaking into Fort Knox.
While other parts of IT become increasingly more automated, Enterprise Architecture is still a very manual job.
8 Applications to Make enterprise architecture easier
That being said, there are plenty of tools out there to make the daily life of an Enterprise Architect much easier. Below, you will find a list of 8 fantastic tools and resources to help you organize, report and review faster.
Let us get started.
1) Slack
You have probably already heard of Slack, but are you using it? As an Enterprise Architect you probably spend a lot of time communicating with stakeholders per email, phone, running across the building to have a quick chat with the CIO etc. At the same time you need to keep track of various updates from multiple tools. Slack helps to streamline this kind of communication.
At its heart, Slack is an instant messaging and collaboration system on steroids. It has the typical features such as channels, private channels, direct messages but also offers file sharing, a search function to quickly find your messages again, notifications and reminders and also a ton of integrations with every system you can think of (even LeanIX!). Below is one of our favorite videos featuring Slack:
Here at LeanIX we absolutely adore this tool. We also have integrations with our own tool so Enterprise Architects can get notified when something important happens in LeanIX.
2) Box
Yes, you guessed it, Box is an enterprise content management platform that solves simple and complex challenges, from sharing and accessing files on mobile devices to sophisticated business processes like data governance and retention. Box is much easier for the users to just "use" without a ton of training. It still requires some but not as much as other similar tools, like sharepoint, this way everybody in your organization can use it to share files.
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3) WorkFlowy
I have always been a bit scatter-minded and wrote notes and reminders on a postit, another one in a blog and finally on a word file which I later forgot to save and thus deleted it...Nearly 3 months ago a colleague recommended an app that is the best note-taking and organizational program I have ever tried.
The program is called WorkFlowy, and it is an outlining app that runs on the Web but also has a mobile version. This way, when you are in a meeting about the technology risks that your IT landscape is facing, and you came up with a great idea on how to fix it, you just start typing your first list item.
Everything in WorkFlowy is part of a single giant list. Each item can have sub-lists under it, and each of those sub-items can have their own nested lists, and so on. The best part, though, is that you can “zoom in” on each item—double-click on a bullet point and WorkFlowy suddenly shows you a new page for that item and all its sublists. Each item in your list, then, is like a new document on its own.
4) ClicData
Reports, every Enterprise Architect needs them and is sick of copy-pasting data into Excel to create some mild looking graphics... so what alternative do you have? ClicData. It easily reports progress and performance of your projects. No matter how complex your data is, this tool can clarify, organize and make sense of it.
Of course this option makes only sense if you are not already using LeanIX, which provides all common EA reports out of the box.
5) Trello
Imagine a task planner not only for yourself but for your whole team, with a great overview for all... that is Trello. A Trello board is a list of lists, filled with cards, used by you and your team. 
As an Enterprise Architect you are used to fighting multiple battles at once (usually in many ad-hoc projects while keeping the strategy in place). Trello helps you organize everything in a simple Kanban style.
6) Pingdom
As an Enterprise Architect you need to know the performance of applications (for example to see their availability to assess their suitability and check slas etc.). Pingdom makes it easy for you to monitor the uptime and performance of your website or web application. With Pingdom, you will be the first to know of any issues with your website, DNS, email server, or any other infrastructure you choose to monitor. Pingdom alerts you of any issues so that you can focus on their daily business. The platform is also set-up easily and quickly without all the technical work normally involved. All that is needed is a URL and Pingdom will take care of the rest.
You can also quickly integrate Pingdom in LeanIX to receive real-time metrics!
7) Survey Monkey
You have probably already heard about Survey Monkey, but have you used it? Surveys not only allow you to ask external people about opinions and so, but they are also really useful when you need to run IT security surveys for example.
LeanIX also has a survey feature with which you can run these IT security questionnaires AND directly incorporate the answers into the database, updating automatically all technology risk reports for example.
8) LeanIX
LeanIX is an Enterprise Architect Management tool which helps you establish a sustainable transparency in IT, accelerates your architecture initiatives (EAM) and improves business and IT alignment.
What is the great thing about this tool? It takes 80% less time to get it completely up and running in comparison to traditional EA tools. LeanIX is suited for any number of use cases like:
- Application Portfolio Management
- Integration Architecture Management
- Technology & Risk Management
- Information Management
- Provider & Sourcing Management
- IT Financial Management
It is modern Software-as-a-Service: easy to use and commercially attractive.
