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One of the questions I’m asked frequently is “how do I launch business architecture in my company?” I know it can be challenging--I have a lot of great responses to this question, and I offer classes specifically on this topic and consulting with organizations to do it. At the same time, I believe that benefits from business architecture techniques and models are already attainable for you regardless of your defined role, position or formality in the business. I always say, once you start thinking and acting like a business architect, regardless of where you sit, things will make sense to you in a new way and you will provide value for the business.

I was a few minutes early for a lunch meeting a few weeks ago, so I stopped by a furniture store across the street from the restaurant that had a big sale sign out front. When I stepped into the store, it became clear by the room vignettes (and the prices) that this was an interior design retail showroom.

There’s a fair amount of excitement around Robotic Process Automation or RPA. Some of it is just hype and some of it has substance. In February of this year, *Forrester forecasted that the size of the RPA market will reach $2.9 billion by 2021 – only to quickly point out that this number pales in comparison to the size of the total Artificial Intelligence (AI) spend estimated at $48.5 billion. Forrester also estimated that there will be over 4 million robots doing office and administrative and sales and related tasks by 2021 and the cost of an RPA robot is currently in the $5,000 to $10,000 range per annum. As a single robot may replace as many as three to five workers – the savings are easy to calculate.**  Further, the return on investment (ROI) from RPA has been predicted at a potential of 30–200% —in the first year. ***

2017 may go down as the year of ransomware, rogue software that infects a computer, scrambles the data, demands you pay money to get access back, and eventually destroys your files. In May the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack affected more than 200,000 users in over 150 countries and disrupted operations for numerous corporations. This was followed in June by a new variant of the Petya ransomware, with this cyberattack impacting over 12,000 devices in around 65 countries, along with some high profile corporations. While most ransomware still targets consumers, what is notable for business architects is that according to Kaspersky Lab, ransomware attacks on businesses increased 11x in 2016. So what is the role of a business architect regarding cybersecurity, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning? I honestly have no idea. In the spirit of never letting a serious crisis go to waste, let's see how we can help.

Cybersecurity Framework

In the last twenty years we have become very good at mapping and improving processes; but we still have poorly structured organizations. Can we use our understanding of processes to improve organization design?

A process exists to deliver a positive outcome to a customer or beneficiary. Sometimes the beneficiary is the person who does the work, as when you make a cup of coffee for yourself. But most processes in organizations exist to do something of value for an external or internal customer, who is not the person doing the work. This principle, deliver value to the customer, lies behind one of the great developments in process work – Lean. By analysing a process with a focus on what is needed to deliver value to the customer and eliminating everything that is not needed, a process becomes Lean. But Lean tells us little about how the work and people involved in delivering the process should be structured into an organization.

So let me try to make a connection.