New research on IBQMI Lean Enterprise Architect®
Connecting Architectural Decisions, Runtime Control, and Evidence in IBQMI LEA
Architecture decisions lose their force somewhere between approval and operation. LEA is built to close that gap — and this study shows how, page by page, across the 2,069-page method.
Decision K1 Authority K2 Control K3 Consequence K4 Evidence K5 Change K6The path every architecture decision has to travel — and the six conditions the study tests along the way.
Research preprint by Marcello R. Avagliano, one of the main contributors to LEA. Published with its full evidence register and reproduction package, so anyone can check and challenge it.
What the study found
“LEA makes the passage from business priorities and architectural choices to controlled, evidenced, and revisable action an explicit responsibility of its EA method.”
Deciding is rarely the hard part. Making the decision govern what actually happens is. The study traces how LEA prescribes exactly that — in four findings, each tied to the exact pages of the manual.
Strategic objectives are linked to operational indicators with thresholds, accountable owners and decision rights for trade-offs such as cost versus latency. Policy gates block promotion when thresholds are violated; monthly review and rebaselining keep the link current.
LEA V1_6 manual, section 6.1.4.2 · PDF pp. 727–728
Each project or repository carries a structured architecture declaration that downstream pipelines must consume — from infrastructure planning to deployment admission, telemetry and governance records. Capability profiles connect business ownership to policies and control points.
LEA V1_6 manual, section 6.6.3 · PDF pp. 1123–1125, 1309–1314
A minimum data contract defines what a change must carry: ownership, operational context, service-level objectives, cost, policy and waiver status. If required fields are missing, promotion is blocked. Experiments declare measures, observation windows and rollback criteria before the decision.
LEA V1_6 manual, PDF p. 729 · experiments pp. 709–716
Corrective actions are followed by verification of their result. Telemetry can trigger a policy revision that governance engineers accept, modify or reject with an audit-tracked reason; approved changes are versioned and tried in shadow or canary evaluation.
LEA V1_6 manual, PDF pp. 1173–1174, 1331–1332
Asked the same questions as selected TOGAF 10 governance clauses, evolutionary architecture and the NIST Risk Management Framework, LEA stands out through the additional set of named records, role assignments and decision dependencies in its own procedures.
“A team using LEA must still engineer the system, but these relationships no longer have to be invented from an empty method specification.”From the study, section 4.6
When someone claims an architecture decision really governs what people and systems do, each of these questions needs an answer you can inspect. The study proposes them as an instrument any architect can reuse — for services, infrastructure, human approvals and AI agents alike.
Which decision governs which behavior, version, context, and period?
Who may make, apply, and amend the decision, on what mandate and conditions?
How does the architectural requirement become a rule or procedure that the relevant action must encounter?
What follows from each relevant result, missing input, failure, or exception?
What establishes which rule was applied, what action followed, and whether the required effect occurred?
When conditions or evidence change, who reassesses the decision and how does an approved revision become operative?
Research preprint
Execution-First Enterprise Architecture
Connecting Architectural Decisions, Runtime Control, and Evidence in IBQMI LEA
36 pages, version 11.0, CC BY 4.0
The study ships with its evidence register, comparison matrix, executable code, test fixtures and a reproduction guide. No extra packages, credentials or cloud service required.
unzip LEA_Research_Reproducibility_v11.zip python3 fetch_opa.py --output bin/opa python3 run_probe.py --opa bin/opa --output results/reproduced.jsonDownload reproduction package (ZIP, 73 kB)
Verifying the cited source passages requires access to the LEA V1_6 manual.
Architectural decisions can lose their operational meaning, authority, and verifiability as rules, systems, and responsibilities change. This study examines how IBQMI Lean Enterprise Architect (LEA) specifies the connection between architectural decisions and governed action. A documentary analysis of the 2,069-page V1_6 manual applies six conditions for operational binding and distinguishes explicit prescriptions from illustrations, cross-section reconstruction, and unresolved design. Four findings establish a concrete method contribution: LEA links strategic objectives to accountable trade-offs and promotion gates; requires architecture declarations to enter delivery controls; makes evidence a condition of progression; and routes operational results into reviewed change. Its strategic-alignment and experiment procedures each connect responsibilities, records, decision conditions, and feedback within a single source section. LEA thereby supplies integration decisions for adopting organizations and makes the connection between architecture, control, evidence, and change an explicit responsibility of its enterprise architecture method. A bounded comparison with selected TOGAF 10 governance clauses, evolutionary-architecture sources, and the NIST Risk Management Framework locates this contribution alongside established governance practices. An analytical business case and a reproducible technical probe examine selected implementation consequences. The research contributes an inspectable assessment criterion, source-linked findings, and bounded implementation observations. General authority lifecycle rules and override scope remain unresolved; organizational benefits and comparative performance are not measured.
Avagliano, M. R. (2026). Execution-First Enterprise Architecture: Connecting Architectural Decisions, Runtime Control, and Evidence in IBQMI LEA (Version 11.0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23278912
@misc{avagliano2026efea,
author = {Avagliano, Marcello Raffaele},
title = {Execution-First Enterprise Architecture: Connecting Architectural Decisions, Runtime Control, and Evidence in IBQMI LEA},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
version = {11.0},
publisher = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23278912},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23278912},
note = {Research preprint}
}
This citation refers to version 11.0. To always point to the latest version, use the concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23278911.
Learn the procedures the study examines — and make architecture decisions govern real operations.