What Is Business Architecture

Business architecture is a comprehensive documentation of an organization that describes its entire ecosystem at a high level of detail in a shareable way. It represents the organization holistically and the relationships between its capabilities, value delivery, information, structure, strategies, products, policies, initiatives and stakeholders. Having a business architecture allows an organization to bridge strategy to execution, simplify complexity, and create a shared language for visibility. Business architecture is important for organizations now as it helps them effectively focus resources to enable fast and effective movement of ideas into action during times of constant change.

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What Is Business Architecture

Uploaded by

Dr Neil Drake

Available Formats

Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

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1. What is business architecture?

Officially defined according to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional

Organizations (FEAPO), business architecture “represents holistic, multidimensional
business views of: capabilities, end-to-end value delivery, information, and
organizational structure; and the relationships among these business views and
strategies, products, policies, initiatives, and stakeholders.”

Business architecture is a comprehensive documentation of an organization which:

 Describes the entire scope of its ecosystem

 Represents that ecosystem at a high level of detail
 Is shareable and reusable

A business architecture is to an organization as a blueprint is to a building.

The scope of business architecture is comprised of multiple domains (shown as the ten
small boxes in the diagram below) and their relationships to each other, with
capabilities and value streams as the foundation. All organizations have a business
architecture—it just may not be written down at an enterprise level or according to
industry standard practices. However, once an organization’s business architecture is
documented in a knowledgebase, then blueprints and reports can be generated from it,
to be used in support of a wide range of business scenarios. This Business
Architecture FrameworkTM concept is shown below.

2. What is the value of business architecture?

In the broadest and most generic sense, we like to focus on how business architecture:
 Bridges strategy and execution
 Simplifies a complex environment
 Creates a shared language and visibility

These categories of business architecture value are detailed in the diagram below
along with typical scenarios and results.

3. Why is business architecture so important now?

The bottom line is that we work in complex organizations that are colliding with a
world where constant change is the new normal. Organizations have finite
resources, including time, people and funding, and the key is to focus those
resources on the essential things in the most effective way—and to have a way to
move ideas into action quickly and effectively.
Having an enterprise mindset and the ability to collaborate across business units
effectively is now essential to achieve all of these things, and business architecture is a
critical enabler. It allows us to find and simplify complexity, architect enterprise-wide
transformations, execute change faster from end-to-end, and objectively prioritize
investments. It also provides a rationalized view of an organization necessary to
leverage future investments like cognitive computing.

Business architecture helps organizations to achieve the new mindset they need to
survive and thrive.

Represented below is the progression and the current state of many of today’s
organizations.

4. Business architecture is only used by large businesses, right?

No. While we see the greatest concentration of business architecture practices among
large corporations currently, business architecture is beneficial to any size of
organization—from a sole proprietor to a large global organization. It is also
beneficial to any organization, be it for-profit, non-profit and governmental
institutions.
No matter what an organization’s type or size, it has the best chance of success with:

 A viable and competitive business model

 An intentionally designed organization
 A way to set and execute direction

Business architecture helps with all three.

The need for business architecture is driven more by an organization’s size than by its
type. Small organizations can leverage business architecture right from the beginning,
but the need for the discipline grows as it eventually scales and transforms. This
concept is illustrated in the diagram below.