Interviewing Business Architects

Published

10 December 2022

Updated

11 January 2023

Published In

PRACTICE & VALUE
Summary
A list of helpful questions to consider when interviewing business architects, sourced from the global business architecture community.

Below are questions to consider when interviewing business architects, sourced from the global business architecture community.

Business Architecture Value and Usage

  • Why business architecture?
  •  How can business architecture drive consistent and superior customer experience?
  • What's the first thing you do when starting a new business architecture assignment?
  • What is business architecture all about?
  • Top management does not want to hear about business architecture...what do you do?
  • You join a major project in a SAFe environment, how do you create value for your train team?
  • Can you tell me how do you approach someone new and what techniques do you use to collaborate with a new person?
    • Visualization is super important for this role.  This exercise should demonstrate their skill at presentation and their understanding of the enterprise as a whole.
  • ​​​​​How do you explain the value proposition of business architecture?
  • What business outcomes did your business architecture assessments drive?
  • What business architecture's/a business architect's role within organization?
  • How do you convince business executives to hire you as a consultant instead of the Big 4?

  • When you are part of a certain function, like Risk for example, how do you address end-to-end user experiences without "boiling the ocean"?  (Recommend to focus more on business architecture outcomes rather than practice per se to get experienced candidates.)

Business Architecture Thinking

  • Tell me a time you are most proud of where you used business architecture thinking to drive a result.
  • Lead Up Question: Tell me about a time you served as a bridge between business and technical teams. Your actions could be direct, indirect, or both. Focal Question: What was your “big picture” idea and how did you form it?
  • When you want to help clarify or resolve a complex problem, what do you do?
  • Give an example where you had to deal with ambiguity.
  • If you have to lead a mandate that involves multiples business units with different visions but all concerning the same topic or business capabilities, how will you address it to ensure a common set of objectives and solutions at the end, to avoid inconsistencies and money loss for the organization?

Business Architecture Discipline Concepts

  • Here's a whiteboard, please draw a picture of your company's ecosystem.
  • Describe our business.
    • Good answers should feature descriptions of: purpose, intent, demand, brands, products, propositions, value, competitors, collaborations, suppliers, owners, regulators, and more besides. 
  • Here is a stack of legos, how would you build a vehicle that meets my needs?​​​​​​
    • This question is trying to elicit the problem solving approach of the candidate.  This is the type of question that I as a business architect get constantly and I have to pivot my response based on the person asking the question.  

    • Here are some ways to interpret the candidate responses:

      •  Some candidates start putting blocks together; this is a person of action but only going on their assumptions.  

      • Some candidates throw up their hands and feel it is an unfair question to ask in an interview; this is a person who isn't quite ready for working with big ideas.

      • Some candidates start asking about the different features (i.e.. 2 door vs 4 Door); this is a person who has experience and is interested in what the customer wants.

      • Some candidates start asking about what I will use the vehicle for; this is a person who is looking to help the customer complete their "job to be done."

      • Some candidates may ask "What does the term vehicle mean to you?"; this is a person who is making sure that the communication we were establishing was based on common understanding.  Guess who got hired?

  • What does good business architecture look like?
  • Please explain the components of your metamodel and give an example of their interconnectivity.
    • Depending on the components offered. one can surmise the candidate's exposure to domain architectures, and whether they may have been focused on data, application or infrastructure elements and not a proficient candidate for business architecture.
  • What does business architecture have that other disciplines don't?
  • What kind of competencies you think a business architect should have? 
  • How you would interpret the relationship between corporate business strategy and business architecture.
  • What do you think is the most difficult part of playing your role within an organization? 

​​​​Personal Characteristics and Qualities

  • How would you describe the type of learner you are?
    • If an individual is not teachable and not constantly looking to learn (i.e., grow). I would have concerns, though they could be diminished or amplified by the rest of the discussion.
  • What’s the architecture of an architect? For example:
    • Contextual understanding questions (e.g., industry, organizations, business models)
    • Logical capabilities questions (e.g., analysis, reasoning, collaboration, communication etc. ) 
    • Physical practice, creation, and application of artifacts questions (e.g., strategy, operating model, roadmaps, design)