This role translate the business vision into an effective strategy and provides the blueprint of the enterprise that provides a common understanding of the organization and is used to align strategic objectives and tactical demands. It has overall responsibility for driving major "architecture level" decisions, expressed as the DoDAF 2 enterprise architecture. This typically includes identifying and documenting the architecturally significant aspects of the architecture, including all the high level DoDAF 2 views.

The person playing this role has to answer the following questions: Why is the architecture being created?, How will the architecture be used?, What is the scope of the architecture?. This role is also responsible for segmenting the architecture and assigning each segment to the appropriate party. It is also responsible for providing the rationale for these decisions, balancing the concerns of the various stakeholders, driving down architectural risks, and ensuring that decisions are effectively communicated, validated, and followed.