Resources in Business Architecture (BA)

Responsive web design is fast becoming a mantra in the digital media design.  The idea is to create compelling experiences that adeptly respond to how a person interacts with digital media. It doesn’t matter what device I use to browse an electronic commerce website; the form and content should make it easy for me to find what I’m looking for.  And maybe buy more of their products, more often.

I make the same case for responsive business architecture. As a decision-maker, I need all the tools, techniques, and information I can get to make the most-informed decisions on a daily basis.  Decision making is both an art and science.  I can turn to a business architect and listen to the options available to me. And I can ask my lawyer, accountant, fellow Board members, or any subject matter expert for their opinions.  In the end, I synthesize data and information to come up with the best possible decision at that time.

Let me start with a provoking question: Business architects create capability roadmaps and product managers create product roadmaps. What is the difference and which is more valuable for my business? If product managers manage all the products of a company, is there a need for business architects and capability roadmaps?

Some of us, who are practicing business architects and familiar with "Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge™" (BIZBOK® Guide), may find this question offensive. However, this could be a reasonable question from any senior business leader (particularly unfamiliar with business architecture and product management disciplines).

Reorganization of a business is not easy.  Following the usual process of organizational design, you work to identify the current organization, note the gaps and describe a process for getting to the new organization.  That sounds easy enough in theory, but implementing the reorganization is not nearly as straight forward.  Asking stakeholders what the problems are usually only gets you symptoms.  Identifying gaps is difficult because if the organization knew there were gaps, they would have fixed them.  Then you have those who abhor change who believe their area of the business works fine – it’s everyone else’s fault.

Getting Started

Tuesday was a good day at the office, although nothing out of the typical. I attended two high profile meetings with the product management team and a joint product management and technology requirements definition meeting, received news of my promotion, presented a tool that our team built to solve a resource manager’s allocation problem, and got to work on a really cool proposal to map out a business process end-to-end on a single page of paper.

I always thought simplistically that my role as a business architect is to help bridge the gap between what the owners of the company want and what the rest of the organization delivers. I stand in between those who hold the purse and those who wield the hammer (or whatever your tool of choice may be) so I can better link the two to generate outstanding business results. I’m after business outcomes and so should everyone else in the organization, right? It’s that simple.