In a world where every business change rides on technology, cost can’t be an afterthought. Business need to start with simple thinking process to kick of cost aware architecture from day one.
Business Trigger
Every meaningful tech change starts with a business requirement: shifting markets in financial services, scientific breakthroughs in pharma/healthcare, serving customers better in retail and e-commerce, or a new SaaS product launch. The examples are endless but today almost all of them depend on technology change or adoption. That’s why enterprise architecture matters: translate business goals into technology and data solutions that actually move revenue, growth, and risk outcomes.
Bring cost into the conversation from day zero
If cost shows up only in operations, it’s too late. Architecture and operating cost go hand in hand: design choices set run-rate, elasticity, and egress before the first deployment. Make unit economics (e.g., cost per order/API call) and cost guardrails part of the initial vision, not an afterthought. This is the core of cost-aware architecture.
A simple way to combine TOGAF, FinOps, and TBM
- Use TOGAF to structure the lifecycle (Vision → Business/Information/Technology Architecture → Governance & Change).
- Use FinOps to operationalise cloud spend: tagging, allocation, anomaly response, commitments, and cost SLOs.
- Use TBM to standardise taxonomy and roll allocated costs into business views (budgets, services, value streams).
Together, they create a closed loop: architectural intent → delivery → real-time cost telemetry → portfolio decisions.
Business + Cloud Architecture: where to start
Begin with a short Options Analysisthat sits between the business case and the first design sketch. In plain language, compare a few “T-shirt sized” options (S/M/L) for the target capability each describing expected run-rate and one-off costs, the main risks (security, compliance, resilience, lock-in), the feature set and time-to-value, and the operational footprint the team can realistically support. The aim isn’t to be exhaustive; it’s to make the trade-offs visible so leaders can pick the shape that best fits the business. Capture the decision and its rationale in a one-page Architecture Decision Record (ADR) and link it to the capability and roadmap. Where helpful, map components to TBM categories so budgeting and value tracking are straightforward and early in the process, not an afterthought.
Efficiency Matrix (in the architecture repo)
For each product or service, keep a lightweight efficiency matrix as a living page in the architecture repo, reviewed monthly alongside ADRs. It should summarise the current unit economics (for example, cost per order or per million API calls) against the target, show how well spend is attributable to the product, note a few active efficiency levers the design is using, and record how reliability targets are being achieved without overspending. Keep it close to your diagrams and specifications so design changes, cost signals, and reliability outcomes stay tied together and inform the next iteration.
The Takeaway, Then the Road Ahead
Economics keeps us honest: as Thomas Sowell reminds us, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs,” and “the first lesson of economics is scarcity.” Read through an architectural lens, that means every pattern, platform, or feature set is a choice about what we fund, what we defer, and what risks we accept. Cost aware architecture simply makes those choices explicit so cloud solutions create real business value rather than just more technology.
What’s next in this series: we’ll take this thinking into specific contexts; financial services, healthcare/pharma, retail & e-commerce, and SaaS, showing how to shape options, capture ADRs, and use TOGAF (with light TBM mapping) to land designs that are economically sound and execution ready. The goal: combine business intent, enterprise architecture discipline, and pragmatic cloud building blocks to maximise value; together, not in isolation.
Lead with architecture: turn business intent into execution ready designs that make trade-offs explicit and accelerate time-to-value.If you want a pragmatic blueprint – options, ADRs, and an efficiency loop that ties design to outcomes, get in touch.