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?
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How do you convince business executives to hire you as a consultant instead of the Big 4?
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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?
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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.
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Here are some ways to interpret the candidate responses:
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Some candidates start putting blocks together; this is a person of action but only going on their assumptions.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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?
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- 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)