Organizations often take on projects that require new business and IT capabilities, but neglect to invest in the necessary business architecture before and throughout the project. Business architecture in this context is the development of a common understanding of the structure, motivations and functions of the business today, how the business must change to achieve project goals, and how the business is likely to evolve after the project is completed. The lack of this common understanding can jeopardize the entire chain of results from requirements and IT architectures to implemented processes and systems, which will lead to project failure.
An organization embarking on a transformational project typically needs to define two dimensions of the business architecture: Targeted organizational changes and projectTargeted organizational change encompasses the business opportunities and business outcomes an organization wants from a project, while project execution is all it takes to manifest these opportunities and outcomes. For example, an organization developing its first mobile experience may require new software applications with basic services and data, as well as opportunities to monitor, support and develop that experience. Executing a project to implement this targeted organizational change may require new capabilities in user interface design, software development, analytics, and infrastructure.
Many organizations use agile methods to first implement the most important functions of a project, learn from what they have already implemented, and quickly apply the knowledge gained to new or revised functions. Flexible methods are common today and work well in many organizations, but are often poorly integrated with the enterprise architecture in general and in particular with the business architecture.
*Epics are large stages of work that can be broken down into several small tasks.
*Kanban is a physical or digital project management tool that helps to visualize tasks, limit the amount of work in progress, and achieve maximum productivity (or speed).
Scalable flexible platformSAFeShe defines business epics as “large-scale, end-to-end customer-focused initiatives” and recommends a kanban system to manage them. Within this system, each business epic passes a stage of analysis with sufficient priority, in which the business analyst collaborates with architects and many other stakeholders. At this stage, or ahead of this stage, business architecture professionals should develop, expand or refine the end results necessary to develop a common understanding of how the organization needs to change in order to realize the business epic.
*TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) is an architectural framework that provides tools to assist in the adoption, production, use and maintenance of enterprise architectures. It is based on an iterative process model supported by best practices and a reusable set of existing architectural assets.
*A framework is a ready-made set of tools that helps the developer quickly create a product: a website, an application, an online store, a CMS system.Ideally, each organization should develop its own business architecture methodology based on key standards, such as the TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM).
*ArchiMate is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture inside and outside of business processes in an unambiguous way.
Ideally, each organization should develop its own business architecture methodology based on key standards, such as the TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM).
*ArchiMate is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture inside and outside of business processes in an unambiguous way.
However, for organizations that need a quick start, it is worth dwelling on the basic points of view of ArchiMate, which describes a basic set of responsibilities for architecture and design.
An artifact in the context of business architecture is a direct result of the work of an architect who describes a particular aspect of architecture.
Artifacts can be divided into the following types:
- Catalogues (lists): For example, a catalogue of information systems used.
- Matrixes. They show the relationships between different elements, like the tracing matrix of business process requirements.
- Charts: For example, use-case diagrams.
Each end result may include several artifacts, for example, a reference model may consist of many diagrams and descriptions.
Business architecture artifacts, like any other architectural work, must be continually used, revised and refined through projects to keep the implementation of business epics at an appropriate level.