StraightTalk Scoop (FAQ)

That’s part of what we discuss throughout StraightTalk, but for now think about business architecture as the design of your organization, written down, at a pretty high level of detail. Where it gets interesting though is what you can use this business architecture stuff for to make your organization run better. More on the official business architecture word from the Business Architecture Guild.

StraightTalk is a professional business blog authored by Whynde Kuehn, Founder and Managing Director of S2E Transformation. StraightTalk's mission is dedicated to explaining business architecture, end-to-end, with the goal of helping to advance the discipline globally through shared knowledge. It’s like your personal guide through the world of business architecture – delivered twice monthly. Unlike some blogs though, we are on a mission. We are on a journey together. With each post we unwind and demystify the entire business architecture discipline, reflective of the most recent thought, to help you understand it from end-to-end. (Sort of like those little paper calendars where you open a door each day and get a yummy chocolate except that your knowledge from StraightTalk will last longer.)

Two posts are published each month, focused on foundational content, hot topics and entirely unique thought leadership.  From time to time, we also invite special guests who StraightTalk on their areas of expertise. 

Like any journey, our StraightTalk journey together will evolve as we go, guided by your input, the direction of the business architecture discipline, and what the world needs.

StraightTalk is read on six continents. Practitioners, business leaders, people in related disciplines, and analysts alike are finding valuable, concise information in each StraightTalk post. Here’s what subscribers have to say:

I wanted to reach out to say how awesome your StraightTalk blog is. I am currently working to create a baseline architecture for the company I am now with and your blog has helped me close some gaps. Thank you for all that you do and pioneering this field. Keep knocking it out of the park! – Shane C.

Whynde Kuehn you have really stepped up to another level with your blog this year. It was already awesome but you found a way to take it from 10 to 11! Thanks so much for all you share and contribute! – Dave H.

I read some of your blog posts and I was blown away. Clear, fun to read and full of incredible information. Really inspiring. – Thierry Z.

I religiously follow StraightTalk since [its inception]. The podcasts are precise and full of knowledge. The FABAQs (Frequently Asked Business Architecture Questions) are highly informative and up-to-date. These inspire us and help to build our roadmap for further aspirations in the field. Keep up the good work. – Sharique M.

...StraightTalk has reignited the flame and given me energy to keep fighting the good fight. It can become isolating when trying to help shift an organisation’s way of working and managing itself, but (StraightTalk) posts remind us that there’s an active community all around the world attempting the exact same thing in their workplaces. As a community of practitioners, we energise and encourage each other to keep on keeping on. So thank you (x10) and keep up the great posts! – Jason D.

StraightTalk is one of the most delightful series on business architecture. Anyone interested in any shape and form of architecture may benefit from StraightTalk. – Miklos J.

Kudos and congrats! StraightTalk is one fo the must I recommend for adepts. Just awesome to have it available. Thanks for the efforts and pretty please keep going! – Miklos J.

If you're a business architect practitioner, a learner of the art, or just curious, follow Whynde Kuehn and read [StraightTalk]. Such amazing information being generously shared. – Winston S.

[StraightTalk] has been indispensable to my professional growth. Thank you for everything that goes into making it great and available. – Doug G.

 

Thank you for all that you have done for the business architecture community. I would like to register my sincere appreciation of your efforts and the progress that these efforts are making in the perception of business architecture as a discipline.  – Robert M.

Congratulations! You've really put business architecture on the map. – Yves N.

Congratulations on two years!! Keep up the great work…the community needs you! – George R.

You provide such great information and insight with StraightTalk. I look forward to reading it each month. Congratulations and Happy Birthday [to StraightTalk].  – Kelly C.

Thank you for your leadership and sharing your wealth of knowledge! – Kelly C.

Big Congratulations! So much value from these podcast series. Thank you for creating this channel and for your contribution to the business architecture community! – Shaun R.

#straighttalk is an awesome forum to keep up with latest on #businessarchitecture. Post 45 shares updates to #TOGAF 9.2 focused on key #businessarchitecture concepts: #businessmodels, #businesscapabilities & #valuestreams – all key to understanding how an enterprise creates, delivers, and captures value. – Deepesh M.

I am in LOVE with your blog. What a great information resource! Seriously, anytime I’m trying to explain the connection of business architecture to another discipline or describe a topic, I (first) find the article and then (second) share it with whoever I’m discussing the topic. – Chelsea G.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate (and learn from) your StraightTalk blog – so a big thank you for that. – Doug W.

StraightTalk is the best source for proven and practical advice and best practices in the ream of strategy-to-execution and business architecture. – Josue B.

I love your blog. It is very rich with good information. The segments are short and very easy to read. There are reference documents for further reading where I can continue at my own pace. Thank you. – Casey G.

 

I have been absorbing all of the really great content on the StraightTalk blog....it’s fantastic. – Joseph O.

Your writing is amazingly clear and conversational. – Pete C.

The bi-weekly email blast is a great source of the latest valuable, actionable knowledge about business architecture. Sign up, it’s great! – Wilton W.

The StraightTalk posts are great! They are fun to read and present valuable information and references. The topics are so helpful and relevant to what I am currently working on! – Michele F.

As always, you get to the crux of the matter and make it understandable. Can’t wait for the next post. – Fran H.

StraightTalk is amazing! Seriously. I pay close attention to communication styles and effectiveness, and this is outstanding. I’m sure you put a lot of effort into it. Looking forward to seeing what else comes from this. – Pete O.

I’ve just read your most recent post. You’ve articulated very well some of the issues we’re facing and how to deal with them. I find the practical advice you give in StraightTalk very useful and inspirational. Thank you for your StraightTalk publications. They are invaluable and I look forward to reading many more of them. – Olga B.

Thank you for your StraightTalk series and all that you do for the business architecture community. I’m so grateful for what you do and I’m a better business architect as a result! – Gary J.

A big heartfelt thank you for all that you’ve done to help advance and understand the business architecture practice!! We couldn’t have done it without you. – Gary J.

Awesome accomplishment. I love StraightTalk! Thank you for your efforts on behalf of your friends, peers and colleagues in business architecture!” – Linda F.

StraightTalk blog is great! I have sent links of many of the articles to my colleagues when explaining concepts. It is highly useful! – Chris C.

Simply put, StraightTalk is business architecture distilled, simple, with a bit of fun. StraightTalk is all about condensing a lot of information about a topic into a very simple summary. That’s what makes it so good and useful. Every post will skim the key points for you, but if you are ambitious don’t worry because we provide loads of supporting resources for you to dig into.

StraightTalk is also about, well, straight talk. Simple yet meaningful explanations. Your burning questions answered in plain English (unless you’re using that translate button right now) so that you can just focus on the topic at hand. We do sometimes need to use fancy industry words like “framework” or “metamodel,” but we always define them so that you can learn the lingo, too.

The posts are light in tone and fun – that’s the point. We're about introducing a little fun and not trying to take ourselves too seriously. But make no mistake, the content and knowledge are serious.

StraightTalk is for the people who do, lead or closely interact with business architecture. This includes business architecture practitioners (whether or not you’re officially called a business architect) and the executives to whom they report. And yes, enterprise architecture practitioners and leaders, who have a broader focus inclusive of both business architecture and the IT architecture disciplines, this is most definitely includes you too.

Feel free to share StraightTalk with your friends though in leadership, strategy, planning, customer experience, enterprise architecture, IT, business analysis, business process, project management – anyone who you think might like a little insight on how to break this thing down so that they can do their jobs better.

When you sign up for StraightTalk, we’ll send you an e-mail on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month. Be sure to add StraightTalk to your whitelist of recognized senders, so that StraightTalk doesn’t go into your spam folder. You can also visit the site to view and search our archived posts.

If you decide that StraightTalk isn’t for you, of course you can opt-out at any time.

We are co-creating a journey together and the right next steps will unfold in the right time. Maybe we’ll write a book. Maybe we’ll start a movement. Maybe we’ll share a beer together. Who knows? Join us and find out!

Author Whynde Kuehn tells us that StraightTalk is about giving back. I love to share knowledge (my mom always said I was a teacher) and this works. I have truly enjoyed the people I’ve met in business architecture communities around the world, and this is just fun. And like all journeys I embark on, I think this one is worth taking both for the summit and the views along the way.

At the heart of it though, StraightTalk is about contributing to the advancement of the business architecture discipline globally and I think building a foundation of common understanding is a critical part of that. I believe in the power of what the discipline can do. I want to accelerate our collective progress so that we can shift the conversation over time from discussing things like what is a capability? to how can business and enterprise architecture be fully leveraged to design better organizations, business ecosystems and societies?

I’ve been one of the pioneers, formalizers and advocates of the business architecture discipline since 2003 – living it from just about every angle you can imagine. I’ve started and run consulting practices, worked my heart out to help clients succeed, trained thousands of people in business architecture, helped to co-found the Business Architecture Guild, architected everything from enterprise-wide business transformations to start-ups to cross-sector social initiatives, wrote, presented and built community in every corner of the globe I’ve gone to. Check out my official bio.

As a result, everything I share in StraightTalk, I have done or have direct first-hand knowledge of. That’s my promise to you. I’m not theorizing or summarizing what I googled yesterday – I’m bringing together the most recent evolution of the discipline today with years of experience at many different organizations, so that you get to learn from what worked – and well, sometimes not so much. (Photo credit: Tereza Červeňová)

Get a little smarter, help your colleagues and friends get a little smarter, discover some new resources, get inspired, laugh a little.

If you’re new to business architecture…

If you are an aspiring or new business architect, you’ll love StraightTalk because it will help you to navigate loads of information quickly and logically, in terms that are easy to understand. It’s a complete accelerator for you instead of performing a multi-year research project to figure out what business architecture is and how to get started. (If you think I’m exaggerating, ask some of your experienced colleagues.)

If you’re already an experienced business architect…

If you are an experienced business architect, you’ll love StraightTalk because it will help you to quickly align your knowledge with the current thought, keeping it fresh and maybe even expanding it in some areas. You, in particular, might get a chuckle every once in a while as you’ll understand the full context.

Subscribe to StraightTalk by clicking the link below:

SIGN ME UP

Absolutely! You can send StraightTalk along to your colleagues and friends by sharing the link to sign up: http://bit.ly/ST-sign-up

You can also use the social media buttons at the bottom of each StraightTalk page to share on social media.

In addition, each email will contain a link for you to forward that specific installment.

Yes! Feel free to share your thoughts anytime and let us know what resonated and what didn’t, any topics you’re interested in hearing about, any resources that might be good to share, etc. We'll our best to incorporate your feedback and evolve when the time is right.

Presently, commenting on specific StraightTalk posts on our website is not permitted. However, if you have a really good, substantial discussion point, let’s chat about those on the Business Architecture Guild forums (that includes the Guild website and the LinkedIn Business Architecture Perspectives group) so that everyone can participate and benefit. My intention is not to take away from the global community, but rather infuse new ideas and clarity into the conversation. By the way, I am relentlessly positive and collaborative, so please be hard on the issues, but respectful of your fellow contributors in anything you share.

Whynde Kuehn, the author of StraightTalk, has this to say about her professional self...

I am Business-focused – However, I am a huge advocate of close partnership between the business architecture and IT architecture disciplines within the broader context of enterprise architecture– and the importance of business architects having some technology knowledge.

I am results-focused and practical – Trust me, I know and have written the theory. I can nerd out all day long, but I focus more on action and practicality. This also means that I’m going to talk about a lot of things, not just how to create models and maps. There are a lot of good sources out there that can teach you about those; I’m going to help round out the picture.

I am Co-Founder of the Business Architecture Guild  – This means I believe in that common body of knowledge (BIZBOK^® Guide) and perspective on business architecture and the power of what it can do to bring us together. But, I see in shades of gray and I work very hard to keep a balanced perspective. I have many partnerships and interactions with different organizations and people across the world so that I can bring all of the pieces together. I will bring in special guests for any pockets of knowledge where I’m not confident that I’m an expert. And I listen, learn and collaborate. I promise you’re in good hands.

Come on this journey with us – it’ll be fun.