Stakeholder Mapping

In this installment of StraightTalk, we’re going to explore a sometimes overlooked but all-important domain for the business architecture baseline: stakeholders. Stakeholder mapping techniques came on the scene and matured a bit later than some of the others, so it’s a good time to revisit them and their valuable role in the business architecture.

Silos are in many ways just inherently human, but unchecked, they can become detrimental to an organization’s success. Business architecture is uniquely qualified to break down and bridge silos, as this installment explores.

In order to compete and operate effectively, an organization must have clarity on who their customers are and what products they offer – and this must be consistently understood by every person so they know who they are serving and how they fit within the bigger picture. An organization’s business architecture is front and center to providing this clarity, which is what we explore throughout this installment of StraightTalk.

In this installment of StraightTalk, we return to the idea of business objects, and the important role they play throughout an organization’s business architecture – and why it matters. We will do some serious condensing here of the BIZBOK® Guide to help you put the pieces together and understand how it all works. Why? Well, not for the sake of theory. That’s not what StraightTalk is about. We’re about helping to build a common understanding so that we can all move forward in unison. And architect great things for our organizations and societies, which is the point.

Back to business architecture school one more time. In our last installment, we talked about how to map out (a.k.a write down) the “core” business architecture that included capabilities, value streams, organization and information. Here in this installment, we’re going to talk about mapping the “extended” business architecture domains.