Ten Excepts From Business Architecture Brainstorming

BA's Purpose: As an effective communication & governance tool to blueprint the future of business.

Enterprise architecture related to corporate business, and the documents and diagrams that describe the architectural structure of the business. People who build business architecture are known as Business Architects. Business architecture bridges between the enterprise business model and enterprise strategy on one side and the business functionality of the enterprise on another side. From Wikipedia, business architecture is a part of an Enterprise Architecture. Below are ten additional insights about BA: 

1. Business architecture seeks to represent the architecture of an organization in terms of performance, process, information, and capability - either as it exists or as it is intended to be, thereby facilitating the planning and communicating of business change initiatives.

2. Business Architecture is the requirement set for the Business; IT architecture may be one of those requirements. Other requirements might include Capabilities, Processes, changes in organizational structure, changes in value chains, and systems.

3. Business Architecture is a series of methods and industry-standard practices to describe what you do, why, how, where and who derives or contributes the value of such interactions. It’s about 90% of Why & What and 10% of How. This is captured at a high level in a current state ("as is"), an idealized future view ("to be") and a roadmap to take us there.

4. Business Architecture input can be used into organizational structure, and scope of responsibilities in an alliance type venture; BA input can also be used into where to direct resources and attention to strengthening business capabilities;

5. BA helps to orchestrate the interrelationship between people and process, the enterprise as a whole is more about people, process, and technology. And EA = EBA + EITA, BA may focus on strategy maps, organizational structure, business capability analysis, BA can also be taken as an effective communication tool with well-visualized deliverables.   

6. Business architecture needs to define the following components:
   1) A framework for Business Architecture
   2) A Method (Cookbook)
   3) A set of deliverables
   4) A Metamodel  

7. BA's Purpose: As an effective communication & governance tool to blueprint the future of business, BA is not just for knowledge collection, more about capturing business insight/foresight.
   
   
8. BA's Main Components: Business Value System, Organizational Structure, Business Processes, Business Capability, Business Culture…..

9. BA's Hierarchy: A significant component of EA, 95% of voters agree EA = EBA + EITA

10. BA's Users/Customers: Besides enterprise architects and business analysts, management teams from top-down, use BA to help in decision making. 
    
    

 The Future of BA Brainstorm:

• Is there such thing as Agile BA or Social BA—the Blueprint for Social Enterprise or Agile Business.
• Should Business Culture be included in BA?

• How to make BA deliverable more visualized to delight users?

Posted in: Business Process Management,EA