by Dr. Alexandre Luis Prim
Are you an executive asking yourself ‘Does Business Architecture matter? What value do Business Architects deliver for companies? How does it make money back?’ If you have those questions, this paper is for you! As a Senior Enterprise Architect, I am pleased to share some insights and hot tips to move your Business Architecture forward.
Let’s start from the end. Overall, Business Architecture (BA) contributes to companies by:
- Unfolding strategy into actionable initiatives and solutions from a holistic perspective;
- Connecting dots and designing and managing the organizational structure – processes, products, projects and people through architectural artefacts;
- Removing silos while driving teams toward a similar organisational goal;
- Reducing business complexity and accelerating digital transformation.
Does it sound promising? Let’s return to the beginning to explore further the what, why and how to make a successful Business Architecture.
Background
Enterprise Architecture is the “practice of analysing, designing, planning, and implementing enterprise analysis to successfully execute business strategies” (White, 2022). To do so, Enterprise Architects draw several components to represent the structure and operation of organizations. According to The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF®[1]), Enterprise Architecture is divided into four main domains – business, application, data and technology. Typically, some companies adopt them into two main domains – business and information technology (IT) (Adikpe, Garba and Ali, 2024).
- Business Architecture (BA): it explains the functional structure of organizations by connecting and defining strategies, objectives, structures, roles, processes, products, projects, and roadmaps.
- Application Architecture: it explains the design and structure of IT systems, including interactions and interfaces among applications, and components such as requirements, modules, databases, etc.
- Data Architecture: it explains how data is organized, manipulated and managed according to business and application architectures.
- Technology Architecture: it represents the design and structure of components required for an IT system to operate, like hardware, software, networks, and infrastructure.
According to these definitions, the BA is responsible for catching up on the organizational “live system” and translating it to the whole company. Thus, Business Architects provide critical information to IT Architecture to follow the organizational strategy in the short-, medium- and long-term. Of course, there are some nuances of enterprise architecture maturity levels which differ among companies to deliver value, so, choosing best tools and techniques and next steps according to that maturity level is promising (O’Neill and Ryan, 2020).
The Business Architecture role
Why is it important to invest in a BA? Where to start a BA area? There are several reasons to allocate resources to developing a Business Architecture area in organizations. From that, I highlight some relevant elements to start working on it:
- Strategic initiatives: 9 out of 10 organizations fail to execute their strategies (Norton, 2012). The most common reasons for this failure are the challenge in organising, prioritising and communicating initiatives aligned with the strategic plan. To overcome these gaps, Business Architects play a crucial role in designing initiatives within functional areas, translating strategic decisions to the operational level. Diagrams, heat maps or even dashboards are presented to visualize organizational design as AS IS and TO BE states. A recommended technique for exploring these hierarchical distinctions is the VMOST Analysis Framework, which reflects the strategic vision down to the tactical/operational level.
- Fostering Synergies: As Business Architects work transversally within organizations at various organizational levels and areas – with products, processes, and projects, it strongly contributes to engaging multiple stakeholders to advance strategic initiatives. The majority of initiatives require cooperation among areas, so breaking down silos is essential to reach organizational goals collaboratively! In this regard, there isn’t a specific framework that can be implemented “by the book,” but rather interpersonal relationship skills for Business Architects engaging executives to move business topics forward.
- Initiative prioritization: Creating a list of initiatives based on strategic planning may also be a function of Business Architects. As Business Architects support executives in structuring solutions based on strategic KPIs, highly valued demands must be prioritized to reach organizational goals. This job is done by Portfolio Managers; however, Business Architects are working very closely with them, making clearer the impact of initiatives on AS IS and TO BE scenarios. Adopting methodologies for prioritization is relevant for ensuring a fair weighting in prioritization, reducing the risk of the infamous ‘double standard’.
- Knowledge management: as companies grow more complex, so does managing their processes. As a result, knowing the big picture and some specific details is crucial to comprehend the impact of changes. Hence, BA comes along by providing a knowledge repository toward how organizations work and interconnections among artefacts. Business Architects have the privilege of zooming in/out an artefact – like a process, product, objective, etc. – and supply Directors and Boards with organisational visibility to make the best decisions regarding organizational transformation (Southall, Carr and O’Dowd, 2022).
Furthermore, Business Architects supply executives with critical information to accelerate digital transformation as well as support managers to be more agile in their operational activities, reflecting in reducing time-to-market indicators. Does it seem interesting? If so, let’s discuss some useful artefacts to overcome your Business Architecture obstacles in the next section.
Business artefacts
Business Architects can provide insightful information for decision-makers while managing architectural artefact repositories. That repository would be helpful for the whole organization to understand the current modus operandi (AS IS), as well as to explore potential opportunities (TO BE scenarios). Hence, artefacts are rightly important to define how a company works, such as:
- Architecture view: it summarizes a one-page representation of architectural artefacts and how they are interconnected.
- Domain diagram: it provides an understanding of the business context, structure and design by showing business components and their relationships.
- Capability map: it represents the capabilities which a company leverage to achieve its business goals. This map is useful for business and IT professionals to design medium- and long-view horizon roadmaps (e.g. domain, products, technology, systems).
- Value Stream Map: it shows an end-to-end journey to deliver value for a customer. This artifact may include the interaction line, customer visibility and backend flow according to the service blueprint framework, as well as timing, responsible department, systems, channels, etc., along the value stream steps.
- Business Process Map: it goes down to the activity process to deliver value for someone – a final user (customer) or a middle user (famous internal customer). This artefact is a detailed view of the value stream map when it comes to the operationalisation of activities, including business action, responsibility, risks, internal controls, etc.
- Product Feature Map: it provides a cross-tabulation view among product and business variables, such as channels, technology, segments, etc. This artefact is very useful to comprehend the available product features and those that are in the backlog/roadmap.
- Stakeholder diagram: it involves creating components of people and roles and defining them. Usually, this artefact is associated with domain diagrams.
- Maturity and Heat Maps: it uses a classification of components – from very developed to underdeveloped, to indicate critical domains, capabilities or other component types that may need improvement.
- Roadmaps: it shows a long-term view of business initiatives, such as products, processes, technologies, systems, capabilities, etc. This artefact is very important to help companies drive their strategy into execution while promoting alignment and organizational cohesion.
The above business artefacts are going to provide a landscape of how a company works, but they must be connected to IT artefacts – technology, application, system, and data, to provide a complete view of Enterprise Architecture. They are just a couple of examples and additional artefacts may be added into these, as well as a customisation according to the business’ needs.
Final remarks
When compared to mainstream areas, the Business Architecture role is relatively new in organizations, so there is still a long way to go… According to a survey by Bain & Company, only 1 in 10 executives are satisfied with the role that corporate architecture plays (O’Rourke et al., 2023). One of the most critical points is the fact of adopting a centralized architecture rather than the decentralized embedding of architects within product teams. Further, when allocated on a frontline view, architects have a better view of customer needs and technology trends.
As a Business Architect, I strongly believe in the possibility of this area adding value to the organization. However, I suggest a mission statement to effectively fulfil its functions due to the risk of losing focus because of its breadth of scope and work efforts. According to some benchmarking that I have conducted worldwide, I have noticed different ways in which Business Architecture operates in organizations. Is this a problem? I don’t think so, but rather a necessity for companies due to the different levels of business maturity and operationalization. On one side, there is a risk of performing non-value generating activities due to weak management maturity; on the other side, there is an opportunity cost for those companies that have not implemented this function. So, a mission statement with a long-term roadmap certified by a market expert would make your Business Architecture solid and stronger.
My motivation with this paper has been threefold: (a) highlight why managers should invest in a Business Architecture; (b) clarify how managers implement a BA and where to start it; and (c) describe what is a BA and define its working scope. Thus, a BA area is going to contribute to saving money when it comes to designing, planning and executing strategies to achieve organizational goals. I do hope these themes become helpful to adopters when deciding to invest (or not) in a Business Architecture and make it profitable and successful. I do wish you all the best!
References
Adikpe, Garba and Ali (2024). The Enterprise Architecture (EA) Practice – An Analysis of EA Models for Different Organisational Contexts. Enterprise Architecture Professional Journal.
Norton, D. P. (2012). Successful Strategy Execution – Part I: What Does it Look Like? Balanced Scorecard Report: The strategy execution source. [Online]. Available at: <https://leadernetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BSC-1.pdf>. [Accessed 10th October 2024].
O’Neill, T. and Ryan, L. (2020) Start-Up, Scale-Up and Data-Driven: Enterprise Architecture Maturity Increases. Enterprise Architecture Professional Journal.
O’Rourke, Brendan et al. (2023) Architecture Is Essential for Scaling Agile. Bain & Company. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.bain.com/insights/a-modern-enterprise-architecture-is-essential-for-scaling-agile/>. [Accessed 14th October 2024].
Southall, C., Carr, D., and O’Dowd, J. (2022). From the Editor: The Role of Architecture in Enterprise Evolution. Part 2: The Architecture Journey — Adding Value to Digital Transformation. Enterprise Architecture Professional Journal.
TOGAF (2023). Business Architecture. The Open Group Architecture Framework. [Online]. Available at: <https://pubs.opengroup.org/togaf-standard/adm/chap04.html>. [Accessed 10th October 2024].
White, S. K. (2022). What is enterprise architecture? A framework for transformation, CIO.com. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.cio.com/article/222421/what-is-enterprise-architecture-a-framework-fortransformation.html>. [Accessed 10th October 2024].
About the Author
Dr Alexandre Prim is a Senior Enterprise Architect at Cooperativa Central Ailos, a Brazilian financial institution, and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Vale do Itajaí. Over the last fourteen years, he has taught undergraduate and graduate students about Business Strategy, Project Management, and Supply Chain Management themes. His academic research interests include business architecture & strategy, entrepreneurship & innovation, and adopting new technologies in business management.
[1] TOGAF is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
