The Missing Middle in Composable Strategy
Why advisory is the new architecture—and the key to unlocking ROI in the age of AI
Composable architectures promise flexibility, speed, and scale. But too often, they’re treated like a technology upgrade— a way to swap out rigid systems for modular ones and call it transformation. Unfortunately for everyone hoping for a shortcut, that’s not enough. Too many composable initiatives burn through budgets and goodwill without delivering business results. Composable tooling is powerful, but the real challenge is aligning it with business intent, cross-functional execution, and long-term value.
What’s missing in these incomplete composable transformations isn’t capability, it’s clarity. Composable transformations fail when organizations focus on the pieces at the expense of the system as a whole. They implement APIs, micro frontends, and data layers, and still find themselves stuck in bottlenecks, duplication, and siloed decision-making.
Strategic advisory is the solution. Not as a bolt-on service, but as architecture in its own right: structural, connective, and essential. Advisory-minded leaders see the dependencies between technology and people, between business outcomes and operational models. They anticipate friction before it slows things down. And in an era increasingly shaped by AI and autonomous agents, that system-level perspective isn’t a luxury, it’s a prerequisite for coherence.
It’s time to stop treating strategy as a kickoff exercise and for it to live inside the architecture itself.
The Composable Promise and Its Pitfalls
The value proposition of composable is clear. Modular systems let organizations move faster, test new ideas with less risk, and scale capabilities without rebuilding from scratch. The promise is agility: being able to reconfigure business functions as easily as rearranging code blocks.
But composable strategy often gets lost in translation. What starts as a bold vision becomes a checklist of technical milestones. Teams chase interoperability, implement APIs, adopt MACH principles— and still end up wondering why things aren’t moving any faster. We’ve seen global brands implement MACH-certified stacks only to stall in execution because business units weren’t aligned. The technology is in place; the value isn’t.
That’s because composability doesn’t magically solve complexity. In fact, it can expose it. Unless there’s a clear, coordinated strategy guiding the work, composable architectures end up replicating the very silos they were meant to break.
The System Blind Spot
Most organizations are good at looking down— at tools, platforms, and features—but fewer are good at looking across at how everything connects. That’s the system blind spot.
Composable transformations often suffer from local optimization: every team improving its part, while the whole remains disjointed. Without someone holding a wide-angle view, inefficiencies accumulate. Data gets fragmented. Priorities diverge. Projects multiply without delivering integrated outcomes.
This is where strategic advisory shows its value, not in abstract strategy decks, but in day-to-day decisions about what to build, how to sequence work, and where to focus. Advisory creates the connective tissue that turns individual efforts into organizational momentum.
Advisory as Architecture
Advisory work is often dismissed as overhead, something to be minimized or outsourced. But in composable strategy, it plays a role as fundamental as any technology choice. It’s not just about insight. It’s about structure.
Think of it this way: software architects define how systems scale and evolve. Strategic advisors do the same for value. They surface misalignments between business intent and delivery models. They help prioritize what matters most, even when every team has a different definition of “urgent.” They create coherence, not just across codebases, but across roadmaps, KPIs, and customer experiences.
That’s architecture. And just like technical architecture, if you don’t design it intentionally, it emerges haphazardly— and rarely in your favor.
The AI and Agent Imperative
AI raises the stakes. Smart agents, copilots, and automation layers depend on structured, well-orchestrated systems. They need clear handoffs, shared semantics, and aligned incentives to work effectively across an organization.
Without strategic advisory, AI initiatives end up chasing isolated efficiencies, accelerating some tasks while unintentionally breaking others. The promise of intelligence turns into a proliferation of disconnected actions. Worse, it becomes harder to see where decisions are being made, and by whom.
Strategic advisors don’t just help deploy AI, they help architect the operating conditions where AI can thrive. That means designing flows, resolving conflicts, and ensuring that automation complements rather than fragments the business.
Building the Advisory Layer
So who owns this function? It varies. Some organizations embed it within digital strategy teams. Others lean on external partners who bring experience across industries and architectures. The most effective models blend both, pairing internal understanding with outside perspective.
What matters is that it’s treated as a core competency, not a temporary role. Advisory shouldn’t just show up at kickoff or during quarterly reviews. It should be embedded in sprint planning, in tech decision-making, in metrics design. It needs to be empowered to challenge priorities, shift investments, and drive alignment— not just advise from the sidelines. It needs to have teeth, and it absolutely needs a seat at the table.
You’ll know it’s working when cross-functional teams are aligned, when priorities don’t shift with every stakeholder conversation, and when the road from strategy to delivery feels less like a maze and more like a map.
From Missing Middle to Strategic Center
Composable isn’t a plug-and-play solution. It’s a long-term shift in how organizations build, connect, and evolve their capabilities. And that shift demands more than platforms or partners. It demands strategic clarity, embedded from the start and carried through to every execution layer.
Advisory is the missing middle that turns ambition into action. Treat it like architecture—not optional, but essential—and the promise of composable becomes a lot more real.
Leigh Bryant
Editorial Director, Composable.com
Leigh Bryant is a seasoned content and brand strategist with over a decade of experience in digital storytelling. Starting in retail before shifting to the technology space, she has spent the past ten years crafting compelling narratives as a writer, editor, and strategist.