About | AJ Olivier

The Work

Every organisation I work with shares the same frustration: they know where they want to go, but something keeps pulling them back.

It's not a lack of strategy. It's not a shortage of smart people. It's gravity: the accumulated weight of complexity that builds up over years. Initiatives that don't connect. Interpretations that conflict. Decisions made so long ago that nobody remembers why.

Traditional responses make it worse. More governance. More frameworks. More documentation. The organisation gets heavier, not lighter.

I take a different approach.

I help leaders see their organisation as a system of capabilities: what the business does, how it creates value, what needs to change. This isn't abstract modelling. It's the foundation for every meaningful decision: where to invest, what to stop, how to sequence change, why certain initiatives keep failing.

When strategy connects to objectives, objectives connect to capabilities, and capabilities connect to the work, something shifts. Leaders stop reacting and start designing. Teams stop debating definitions and start building. Transformation stops being a buzzword and becomes measurable.

That's escape velocity.

The Approach

My work sits at the intersection of three disciplines:

Business Architecture

Capability models, value streams, operating model design. The structural foundation that makes everything else possible.

Domain-Driven Design

Bounded contexts, strategic classification, the bridge between business language and technical systems.

Dynamic Capabilities

Sensing, seizing, transforming. How organisations learn and adapt. The difference between static blueprints and living systems.

Most architects specialise in one. I've spent years integrating all three, because real transformation requires all of them working together.

The Tools

I don't just advise. I build.

EA Workbench

A platform for capability modelling, value stream mapping, and architecture management. What used to take months now takes weeks.

Accelium

An assessment engine that turns subjective conversations into structured insights. Maturity diagnostics, impact analysis, prioritisation. Automated and repeatable.

Soaring Wings

macOS iOS

My all-in-one consulting platform. A native macOS and iOS application with industry-standard architecture patterns, knowledge graphs, and on-device AI. It's how I deliver the speed and accuracy of a large consulting team on my own.

Web Applications

Web

Full-stack web development with Next.js, Vercel, and Supabase. Dashboards, assessment tools, and client portals that bring architectural insights to stakeholders everywhere.

These aren't products I sell. They're how I work, and why engagements move faster than clients expect.

The Background

I've spent my career in financial services architecture: banking and insurance, specifically. Claims systems, credit decisioning, underwriting, policy administration, customer journeys. The domains where complexity compounds fastest and the cost of misalignment is highest.

Before consulting, I held roles across solution architecture, integration, and enterprise architecture. I've designed operating models, led platform transformations, built microservices architectures, and facilitated more strategy sessions than I can count.

Currently pursuing an MPhil in Entrepreneurship at the University of Pretoria, exploring how dynamic capabilities translate into startup and scale-up contexts.

The Person

I think in systems but communicate in stories. I believe the best architecture is invisible. It just makes everything else work. I'm skeptical of frameworks that exist to be impressive rather than useful.

I like building things. Sometimes that's a target operating model. Sometimes that's a Swift app for macOS and iOS. Sometimes that's a Next.js dashboard. Sometimes it's a new way of thinking about a problem nobody knew they had.

Quirky, philosophical, experimental.
A trusted advisor who builds native apps and writes code.