MGMT 6125

Perspectives for
Business Analysis
Modules 6-7: Business Architecture Perspective

Material in this presentation is sourced from the

Business Analysis Book of Knowledge v3.
INTRODUCTION – THE BUSINESS
ARCHITECTURE PERSPECTIVE

Provide
Common Business architecture models the
Understanding
enterprise in order to show how
strategic concerns of key
stakeholders are met and to
support ongoing business
transformation efforts.
Business
Architecture

Align to Support
Strategic Ongoing
Objectives Transformation
 INTRODUCTION – THE BUSINESS
ARCHITECTURE PERSPECTIVE

Business Architecture principles

• Scope – the entire enterprise.
• Separation of concerns and scenario driven –
different blueprints
• The information the business uses,
• How the business is performed,
• Who does it and where in the enterprise it is done,
• When it is done, and
• How well it is done.
• Knowledge based – collect and catalogue the
different architectural components.

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11.4.1 CHANGE SCOPE

Breadth and Depth

Entire enterprise and may be performed:

• Across enterprise as a whole
• Across a single line of business (business model)
• Across a single functional division

• Executive level: strategic decision making.

• Management level: execution of initiatives.

Fanshawe College

What is Fanshawe College? How would you define it?

Is it:
• The buildings?
• The students?
• The staff?

• A set of defined processes.

• A set of decision rules.
• An organizational structure.
11.4.1 CHANGE SCOPE

Elements
• Capabilities
• Reporting and management
• Value
• Stakeholders
• Processes
• Security strategies
• Information and data
• Outcomes
• Organization
11.4.1 CHANGE SCOPE

Purpose of the Architectural Model

• See the ‘big picture’ of the domain under analysis.
• Understand how the elements work together.
• Help keep systems and operations functioning in a coherent and useful manner.
• Determine which elements are most relevant to a given change.
• Assists with prioritization and resource allocation.
• What other elements might be affected by the change.
• Performance metrics are used to identify potential problem areas that need
improvement.
• Ensures that actions are aligned with the organization’s vision, goals, and
strategy.
11.4.1 CHANGE SCOPE

Types of Initiatives
• Strategic planning.

• Business remodeling.

• Organizational redesign.

• Stream­lining business operations.

• Cost reduction.

• Formalization of institutional knowledge.

• Performance measurement.

• Communicate and deploy the business vision.

11.4.1 CHANGE SCOPE

Business architects require a broad understanding of the organization:

• Environment and industry trends,
• Structure and reporting relationships,
• Value streams,
• Capabilities,
• Processes,
• Information and data stores, and
• How these elements align to support the organizational strategy.
11.4.2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS SCOPE

Business Analyst Position

The goal is to:
• Understand the entire enterprise context.
• Provide balanced insight into all the architecture elements and their
relationships.
• Provide a holistic view of all the specialties within the organization.

Required insights, skills and knowledge:

• Business strategy and goals
• Conceptual business information
• Enterprise IT architecture
• Process architecture
• Business performance and intelligence architecture
11.4.2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS SCOPE

Business Analysis Outcomes

The general outcomes:
• Alignment of the organization to its strategy.
• The planning of change in the execution of strategy.
• Ensuring that as change is implemented, it remains aligned.

Key deliverables include:

• Business capability maps.
• Value stream maps.
• Organization maps.
• Business information concepts.
• High-­level process architecture.
• Business motivation models.
11.4.3 REFERENCE MODELS AND
TECHNIQUES
Reference Models
Reference models are predefined architectural templates that provide
one or more viewpoints for a particular industry or function
• Considered the default architecture ontology (industry or function).
• Provide a baseline architecture starting point.

ACORD Insurance and financial industry

BMM Generic
COBIT IT governance and management
eTOM & FRAMEWORX Telecommunications
FEA SRM Government (US)
ITIL IT service management
SCOR Supply chain management
 SCOR Model

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 SCOR Model - Implementation

SCOR v12, APICS. www.apics.org

 SCOR Model - Metrics

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 SCOR - Benchmarking

http://www.apics.org/apics-for-business/benchmarking/scormark-benchmarking
11.4.4 UNDERLYING COMPETENCIES

Competencies
• High tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.

• A great deal of political acumen.

• Ability to:
• Put things into a broader context.
• Transform requirements and context into a concept.
• Suppress details and provide higher level views.
• Think in long term time frames.
• Deliver tactical outcomes.
• Interact with people at the executive level.
• Consider multiple scenarios and outcomes.
• Lead and direct change.
11.4.5 IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

BA’s are required to understand the organization’s:
• Strategy and direction, operating model and value
proposition, current business and operational
capabilities, stakeholders and their points of
engagement, plans for growth, governance, and
planning processes, culture and environment, and
capacity for change.
Governance planning and monitoring focuses on:
• Selecting which initiatives will provide the most benefit in
achieving the business strategies and outcomes.
• Determining which frameworks or models exist or are
utilized within the organization.
11.4.5 IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Elicitation and Collaboration

• BAs need to deal with a great deal of ambiguity & uncertainty.
• Communicate with and understand a diverse range of
stakeholders.
• Elicit inputs such as strategy, value, existing architectures,
and performance metrics to develop deep understanding.
• Advocate for the organization’s strategy working to ensure alignment
of individual initiatives to the strategy.
• Play a role to bridge the needs of individual stakeholders, projects
and operational groups to optimize the enterprise's goals and
strategy.
• Optimize organization’s goals and strategies, discouraging activities
that achieve a narrow goal.
11.4.5 IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Requirements Life Cycle Management

• BA’s need to understand how projects impact the business

architecture on an ongoing basis and work to expand, correct
or improve the architecture.
• Essential that BA’s have executive level support and
agreement.
• Engage with architecture review board to review and assess
changes to the architecture.
• Identify possible emerging changes both internal and
external.
• Decide how to incorporate changes into the business
architecture of the organization.
11.4.5 IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Strategy Analysis

• Play a significant role in strategy analysis.

• Business architecture provides views on current state,
transitional state and future state of the organization.
• Develop roadmaps based on the organization’s change
strategy to ensure the organization continues to deliver value
and remain competitive throughout the change.
• Analyze factors such as:
• Market conditions
• Which markets to move into
• How to compete in the transition state
• How to best position the organization’s brand proposition
11.4.5 IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Requirements Analysis and Design Definition

• BA’s select a variety of architectural models or views for

various stakeholders to provide context and information.
• These models result in better requirement analysis and
design, as they:
• Remove need to make assumptions
• Minimise risk of duplicating already existing capabilities, systems or
sub-­optimizing the whole enterprise
• Synthesize knowledge and insights from multiple architectural
views to determine if proposed changes work towards or
conflict with organizations goals.
11.4.5 IMPACT ON KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Solution Evaluation

• BA’s need to understand how well the business is performing

and investigate these measures against the expected
outcomes and initiatives.
• Must be able to collect capability and process performance
data collected by business owners, operational or IT
managers.
• BA’s analyze the results of measurements and use these to
evaluate solution impact and factor these into subsequent
planning.
Business Architecture Case

• Review and prepare for the case.

• In addition to the discussion questions for next class, there will be a short
reflective statement or question for this case.