Establish the Foundation

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.

This installment of StraightTalk describes what servant leadership is, why it is so important, and how servant-leader characteristics can help business architects to become more successful.

As a newer role on the scene, working in a business world ubiquitous with design, digital, agile and other emerging concepts, the way we show up as business architects matters a lot. Because everything we do and say demonstrates to others what business architecture really is, and we need to be relevant and distinguish ourselves. The success of a business architect then is not just in what we know or what we do — but in our Ways of Working (WOWs), which this installment of StraightTalk 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.

This is the third and final installment in a series on how business architecture can be used to catalyze, embed and enforce key sustainability, legal and ethical considerations into an organization’s DNA. In this StraightTalk post, we explore how organizations can leverage business architecture to ensure ethical decision-making and actions.

This is the second installment in a three-part series where we examine how business architecture can be used to catalyze, embed and enforce key sustainability, legal and ethical considerations into an organization’s DNA. Here we explore how organizations can leverage business architecture to enable policy making and compliance.

This installment of StraightTalk is the first in a series that focuses on how business architecture can be used to catalyze, embed and enforce key sustainability, legal and ethical considerations into an organization’s DNA. Using business architecture in this way truly unlocks its value and power. First up in our series: how business architecture can enable organizational sustainability, so here goes.