Governance before architecture.

The first question in enterprise AI is not which model to use. It is what the system is allowed to do.

That question lives in governance, not in architecture. Yet most teams start with architecture and retrofit governance later, which creates systems that work technically but fail organizationally.

Governance is the specification that architecture enforces. Define the contract first. Build the system second.

When that order is respected, the architecture decisions become clearer. What requires approval, what can run autonomously, and who owns the audit trail are all answered before a single integration is designed.

What this changes in practice: before any architecture meeting, ask what the governance contract says. If it does not exist, build that first.