Multiple CIOs also had to sponsor Chevron's EA strategy -- the corporate CIO sponsored the enterprise team while the functional CIOs, like Ehrlich, gave their enterprise-level support and focused on creating their own EA groups in addition to the central EA team.

3. One size doesn't fit all. There are many ways to organize an EA group, and CIOs can experiment with different models to find the best one.

Virtual teams. Helen Polatajko, CIO at CIBC Mellon, says the small size of her IT group (120 staff) is the main reason she kept her architects decentralized in a virtual EA team. "I have four architects -- applications, infrastructure, security and desktop -- who still report in to their lines of business. But to ensure that there's collaboration and to push the IT strategy forward, they come together to look at architecture at the enterprise level," explains Polatajko. There's no chief architect, although Polatajko and two other VPs from IT join in EA discussions to lend insight.

Brent Stahlheber, CIO at The Auto Club Group, has shifted from a centralized group to a virtual one. "What I was seeing when I had the centralized EA group was a disconnect between my architects and the business," he says. By placing the architects back into the application development and infrastructure support areas, Stahlheber anticipates that they will be better in tune with the business.

Federated model. John Bloom, chief architect for Chevron's corporate IT, and his team of 12 serve as an EA center of expertise for Chevron's lines of business and head up corporatewide architecture initiatives. Ehrlich has his own EA team of eight providing support for Global Downstream, and he doesn't hesitate to call upon Bloom's staff for guidance. This model has been in place for two years.