Practice: Mature & Assess

Summary
In Step 5, business architecture is applied to various business usage scenarios to deliver value to the organization. This step is the most important one and is the reason why business architecture exists. Building the knowledgebase and creating supporting practice infrastructure should be completed just enough, just in time to support the relevant usage scenarios in this step.

In Step 6, the business architecture is expanded and refined as needed, prioritized by the relevant usage scenarios from Step 5. This may include activities such as decomposing capabilities or articulating new value streams, mapping additional business architecture domains beyond the baseline (e.g., business units, strategies, policies, products, stakeholders, initiatives or metrics) or cross-mapping the business architecture to domains from other disciplines (e.g., cross-mapping capabilities to journeys, processes, applications, software services or requirements).

In Step 8, the business architecture practice maturity is assessed along with other measurements of its success. In conjunction with practice goal setting, this informs Step 9 to drive practice direction over the next horizon.

In Step 9, goals are established for the practice during the next horizon. These goals along with the results of the business architecture practice maturity assessment and other success measurements are then used to plan enhancements for the practice during the next horizon, resulting in a practice roadmap. The planned enhancements are executed and measured again in Step 8. Steps 8 and 9 typically occur as an annual planning rhythm where the measurement, goal-setting and next horizon planning for the business architecture practice are done at the end of the year, and then practice enhancements are executed during the following year. All planned practice enhancements should be directly aligned with how business architecture is being applied in Step 5.

5 Apply Business Architecture

 

Other Resources and Activities

 

6 Expand and Refine Knowledgebase

Core Business Architecture Mapping and Evolution

  • StraightTalk No. 12 – A Map of the World, Part 1: Back to School With Mapping the Core Business Architecture Foundation
  • StraightTalk No. 85 – Demystifying An Organization: The Business Architecture Take on Organization Mapping
  • StraightTalk No.49 – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Dos and Don’ts For Establishing a Business Architecture Practice
  • StraightTalk No.32 – Leaving a Legacy: How to Deal With Legacy Business Architecture Challenges

Mapping the Extended Business Architecture Domains

  • StraightTalk No.13 – A Map of the World, Part 2: Back to School With Mapping the Extended Business Architecture
  • StraightTalk No.31 – How to Deal With Strategy Challenges: Bad Strategy, Non-Strategy, No Strategy
  • StraightTalk No.26 – The Canvas Awaits — How Business Models and Business Architecture Fit Together
  • 5-Minutes with Linda Finley: How Business Models Work with Business Architecture podcast
  • StraightTalk No. 80 – Business Models Through the Business Architecture Looking Glass
  • Linking Business Models with Business Architecture to Drive Innovation Guild white paper (see Business Architecture Guild® Public Resources page)
  • StraightTalk No.24 – Business Architecture In Action For Product Management — How Business Architecture Enables Better Product Investment, Planning and Solutions
  • StraightTalk No.58 – Evolving the Organizational DNA, Part 1: How Business Architecture Can Enable Organizational Sustainability
  • StraightTalk No.59 – Evolving the Organizational DNA, Part 2: How Business Architecture Can Enable Policy Making and Compliance
  • StraightTalk No.60 – Evolving the Organizational DNA, Part 3: How Business Architecture Can Enable Ethical Decision Making and Actions
  • StraightTalk No.70 – Raison d‘être: The How and Why of Business Architecture Stakeholder Mapping
  • StraightTalk No.71 – Taking Initiative: How to Leverage Business Architecture for Initiative Planning

Integrating With Other Disciplines and Teams

 

Other Resources and Activities

 

8 Assess Practice Maturity and Results

 

Other Resources and Activities

 

9 Plan and Deliver Improvements

 

Other Resources and Activities

 
Previous Step: Establish The Foundation