I’d like to make the case why business architects should operate outside of enterprise architecture (EA).
First, business architects are “big thinkers” and more business savvy than their EA counterparts. Their cultures clash. No matter how much EAs cast themselves as strategic thinkers, trusted advisors, or business partners there still seems a stigma that EA is only all about IT. This stigma stuck for decades and may help explain why IT-oriented EAs attracted only their kind. Meanwhile, recent converts to business architecture possess a distinct left- and right-brained aptitude for stating holistic viewpoints that are rigorous, well-understood, and fact-based. Some of them are ex-product managers, ex-business analysts, ex-sales, ex-entrepreneur, or simply ex-EAs or ex-IT pros who recently earned their MBAs and a light bulb went on, so to speak.
A year ago, I wrote a BA Bulletin article entitled “A Business Architecture Body of Knowledge.” In that article we examined the grassroots evolution of a body of knowledge and early signs of adoption. We spoke of selected success stories, business architecture as a worldwide phenomenon, the move towards business-driven business architecture and initial automation efforts. That article also discussed the rollout of release 1.0 of “A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge” (BIZBOK™).[1] Since that time, business architecture has matured as a discipline and in practice, moving beyond simplistic discussions that were commonplace just a couple of years ago.
Leveraging a Foundational Business Discipline
Capability mapping is commonly recognized as a business-oriented foundation for communication and collaboration, issue analysis and resolution, and prioritization and roadmap creation. Capability mapping is not hype and it is not an IT discipline. Rather it is a rapidly growing business practice that establishes a common business vocabulary that enables an organization to articulate an actionable vision, state a clear direction, focus investment priorities, address merger, acquisition, divestiture and outsourcing challenges, and focus technology investments on clearly articulated business demands. To begin leveraging this powerful discipline, attend this half-day workshop. The session will allow you to jumpstart or accelerate the mapping and use of business capabilities for a variety of business initiatives. Half-day workshop topics include:
Leveraging a Foundational Business Discipline
Capability mapping is commonly recognized as a business-oriented foundation for communication and collaboration, issue analysis and resolution, and prioritization and roadmap creation. Capability mapping is not hype and it is not an IT discipline. Rather it is a rapidly growing business practice that establishes a common business vocabulary that enables an organization to articulate an actionable vision, state a clear direction, focus investment priorities, address merger, acquisition, divestiture and outsourcing challenges, and focus technology investments on clearly articulated business demands. To begin leveraging this powerful discipline, attend this half-day workshop. The session will allow you to jumpstart or accelerate the mapping and use of business capabilities for a variety of business initiatives. Half-day workshop topics include:
The drum beats are echoing across the Global 2000 about the value of business architecture, and more specifically business capability mapping. Business capabilities – in other words “What a business does” – are in vogue. Business capabilities, in conjunction with value stream (process layer) mapping and business service to IT service transition (service layer) mapping, are supposed to lead businesses to a state of nirvana.
Business and Information Technology (hereafter referred to as business-IT) alignment is so passé. Welcome the (relatively) new concept called Business-IT aggregation. The phrase “business aggregation” sometimes refers to a corporation that’s controlled by several key investors tasked to manage the corporation based on a succession plan. The word “aggregation” means the sum of the parts, the totality of components, or simply “the whole”. One dictionary (AllBusiness.com, 2010) defines it as “any bringing together of parts or units to form a collective whole.”
Contributed by: Atul Bhatt, Enterprise Architect, Wells Fargo & Company
Business Architecture (BA) is no longer just an emerging discipline or an “interesting concept”. It is increasingly being leveraged by enterprises to provide tangible value. And within Wells Fargo, Business Architecture has been gaining momentum, slowly but surely, through the activities of a growing BA community, involved in numerous efforts in or related to Business Architecture.
First, let’s define Business Architecture. The following is a consolidation of several definitions that have been around in the industry, and it captures quite well the quintessence of BA:
Business Architecture is a disciplined approach to creating and maintaining business-specific artifacts that serve as a formal blueprint for the planning and execution of strategy across the enterprise.
BA covers the following major areas:
Two of my biggest passions are business architecture and participating in endurance events like an Ironman® or an ultramarathon. Having excelled in both over the years taught me a few lessons. At the end of the day, every business architect’s goal to improve decision-making and accountability for business outcomes is not much different from an endurance athlete’s goal to win. I even coined the term “endurance architect” to aptly describe what I do. In my opinion, an endurance architect is someone who can bring the lessons from the playing field to the boardroom and vice versa to achieve sustainable profitability and/or self-actualization. How do we achieve these lofty goals? Let me start with the nuances of strategy and outline the steps of achieving success through strategic co-alignment, with examples from an endurance architect’s point of view.
What is strategy?
Contributed by: Ralph Whittle, Enterprise Business Architect, Independent Consultant
How does a Business Architecture (BA) team determine the value streams for their enterprise? Is there a suitable reference available in the public domain of the Web for the team to analyze? Many are familiar with and frequently use the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) and its Process Classification Framework (PCF), but does something comparable to the APQC-PCF[1] exist which is organized around value streams by industry? Sadly, the answer is “no.” So what approach should the BA team take and how will they determine the value streams for their enterprise?
In this modern era of business, business architecture as a discrete discipline of business management, has gained substantial traction. Business architecture approaches and methods are evolving and maturing rapidly. Capability maps, which establish a comprehensive view of “what” a business does from a consistent, non-redundant and well-defined perspective, are now a part of the foundational aspects of business architecture. Established business enterprises realize that capability maps are critical for strategic planning and business transformation. During a capability mapping exercise, business architects sometimes don’t give due importance to the significant financial aspects or considerations of an operational business model. Business architecture and capability models are not immune to financial constraints, nor should they be handcuffed by them.
