---
title: Be a meteorologist — produce forecasts, not raw models
pageKind: heuristic
status: published
abstract: Architects deliver forecasts and recommended actions to leadership, not exposed models. The deliverable is the guidance, not the diagram.
sources:
  - articles/possible-futures-enterprise-architecture
---

## The heuristic

> When presenting architecture work to leadership, **produce the forecast** (recommendation, confidence, trade-offs) — not the raw architecture model. Architects are meteorologists, not radar operators.

## When it applies

Executive briefings. Investment-committee architecture reviews. Portfolio rationalisation recommendations. Any time a non-architect is asking "what should we do?" rather than "what does the model say?"

## Why it works

Leadership decisions need three things: a recommendation, a confidence level, and the trade-offs they&#39;re accepting. The architecture model is the *input* to those — not the output. Showing leadership the radar imagery instead of the weather forecast misallocates everyone&#39;s time and produces decisions made on the wrong abstraction.

The meteorology framing also disciplines the architect&#39;s own work. A meteorologist who can&#39;t state confidence levels isn&#39;t doing forecasting. An architect who can&#39;t say "I&#39;m 70% confident option B is the right call because of X, Y, Z" isn&#39;t doing EA — they&#39;re doing modeling exhibition.

This is also the philosophical core of the platform&#39;s wiki kernel: the "what would Mark do?" question is a forecast question. The kernel produces guidance, not raw model output.

## Counterexamples

- Peer-to-peer architecture review where the model *is* the medium.
- Engineering hand-offs where the next team needs the model to build against.
- Compliance / audit contexts where the model is required as record.

## See also

- Parent stance: `[[stances/ea-is-meteorology]]`
- Raw source: `[raw-sources/articles/possible-futures-enterprise-architecture](../../raw-sources/articles/possible-futures-enterprise-architecture.md)`
