In recent years, the term enterprise architecture framework has been creating a buzz in almost all industries, and one of the parts of EA is business architecture.
According to The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), Business Architecture “defines the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes“.
The Business Architecture Guild defines it as “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.”
Simply put, It represents an important element of the enterprise architecture discipline that focuses on the business itself. The business comprises several different aspects including people, processes, policies, strategies, information and many other dimensions. The discipline brings all of these elements together through different lenses.
Core Components of Business Architecture
The main components of business architecture include
- Capabilities
2. Information
3. Organizational Structure
4. Value Stream
Expanded Business Views
Although the core components of business architecture exist at an elemental level, by expanding the business views, interrelationships are formed among
a. Capabilities
b. Strategies
c. Information
d. Value Streams
e. Products
f. Policies
g. Initiatives
h. Organization
i. Stakeholders
j. Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Together, these relationships are used to build an overall picture of what the business represents. By building blueprints of different views, an organization can better understand it’s critical components and capabilities. Further, it can gain insight into all aspects of the operation and each aspect fits together. As we can see, business architecture can provide a reality check for many enterprises, and help develop its agenda for improvement, operational excellence, efficiency and relevance in the present and future.
While there are many views to be developed in business architecture, it typically starts with a clear definition of the company’s mission, vision and strategic goals. As long as the company can focus on these three components, alignment can be determined for every initiative, process, policy and decision.