AI is viewed as a significant disruptor, but not a replacement for the human role in business architecture. Most respondents (64.4%) believe aspects of the role will change, with humans remaining central. Meanwhile, 17.3% expect significant portions to be replaced.
A selection of insightful comments from the respondents is below:
Very Unlikely
- Human-centric design will continue to be led by humans; AI will advance repetitive tasks that enable capabilities and value streams to avoid or highlight bottlenecks, enabling a new business pace and therefore competitive advantage when implemented.
Unlikely
- If anything it will allow greater engagement because mundane tasks can be automated allowing more time for simultaneous engagement about more than one strategy or objective at one time. Each business architect will be more productive.
- Business architecture requires too many soft skills.
Somewhat Likely
- I believe that a good business architecture practice will always need a human touch; someone to decide what to automate and what needs empathy, imagination and contextual understanding instead.
- I think that a foundation in business architecture is about human interaction and communication to agree on key principles and delivery of business value. It cannot today be replaced by AI.
- Business architecture is about strategy, key business decisions. AI will augment BA practice, not totally replace it.
- AI will amplify the role but the traditional BA that produces artefacts is at risk. As organisations transform and adapt, business architects will have to do the same. I expect the role will get even more strategic, more complex and higher stakes with fewer people doing it. Over the next 3 years, the focus will be on redesigning how work gets done and executing change; then on decision architecture, autonomy and governance, then ultimately on control, orchestration and shaping adaptive organisations.
- AI is likely to automate much of the analysis and modelling in business architecture, but not the need for human judgement. I see the role shifting towards strategic thinking, decision-making and influence rather than disappearing.
- It’s more about knowing how to use AI to create impact quicker and with impact as a business architect.
Likely
- I believe as strategies and policies are defined, AI will be able to make connections between the new opportunities and demand through the capabilities, portfolio resources, and cost, and make the connections better and faster than a human could do. The output will be the architecture options, benefits, risks, and considerations based on what it knows about the business today and what their future plans are. Humans will be verifying the work and output as input into demand prioritization and product management.
- Building out capability models and documenting how they should be deployed to achieve business goals, takes hours instead of weeks. Still requires human review and adjusting. Same applies to value streams.
Very Likely
It’s not when, it’s how roles will be automated. It’s not a surprise anymore.
