The Million-Dollar Question: What is the Value of Business Architecture
There is a Secret of Business Architecture. The Secret is: it's not about the business architecture.
What bonds us together as architects, leaders, change makers, and catalysts across the world is a new vision for strategy execution and new ways of working in our organizations and business ecosystems. This is about a movement, not models.
One of the most frequently asked questions we hear is, What is the value of business architecture?
While there are many, many ways to spin it (and every organization must define its own value proposition for relevance and resonance), we refer to three categories as described in the book Strategy to Reality. The value of business architecture is to...
- Facilitate effective strategy execution
- Evolve the design of organizations and business ecosystems
- Inform decision making
Perspectives from the Global Community
What does the global community think? Review the compilation below with perspectives from leaders, change agents, and practitioners worldwide on what they see as the value of the discipline to organizations...
"The value of business architecture is bringing business leaders together to clarify strategy and to align on the path to execute through a consistent methodology that generates key insights and informs decision making."
"Business architecture:
- Provides a foundation for data-driven decision making
- Creates a shared vision and roadmap for achieving success in a dynamic business environment."
"Depending on who you are speaking to:
- Enabling transformation of a future organization yet to be known or understood (hopefully inspiring and sparks thinking in the right space)
- Addressing complexity, risks and disruptions effectively (resilience)
- Reducing time and effort to deliver business / digital solutions (customer focus)"
"To me, the value of business architecture is uniting the business in developing a strategy execution that is balanced and efficient in driving the corporate vision and desired outcomes."
"The value of business architecture is that it acts as the Rosetta stone between strategy and business and architectural domains to produce a common vocabulary for organizational decision making and execution roadmaps."
"The value of business architecture is the focus on value itself."
"The value of business architecture is realized in building partnerships between business and IT that allow for (1) the creation of a standard vocabulary (so we all speak the same language) ; (2) the alignment of business objectives, across silos, to implement effective IT solutions that enhance business capabilities; and (3) the development of a living architecture that describes the business and how IT supports it over time."
"Business architecture enables:
- Business transformation
- Resolutions of business complex issues
- Products and services with innovative capabilities to market ensuring customer satisfaction"
"The value of business architecture is to help people:
- Understand what a business is and does
- Manage what a business is and does
- Identify where changes are desirable"
"I completely agree that business architecture is not just about models but a movement towards more effective strategy execution and new ways of working in organizations. The value of business architecture lies in its ability to facilitate effective strategy execution, evolve the design of organizations and business ecosystems, and inform decision-making. It is a powerful tool for aligning the organization's structure and processes with its overall goals and objectives.:
"One thing to highlight is how value is realized is that business architecture breaks down silos across teams and levels."
"I would add:
- Providing a foundation for informed, evidence-based strategic decision making is key - effective strategy execution and evolved ecosystem design are the flow on result of good strategic decisions
- Communication (internal and external, visual and verbal) are critical to ongoing business success in the face of constant change - business architecture provides the clarity and consistent language organizations too often lack - with miscommunication minimized leaders can focus wholeheartedly on building agility and leveraging business capabilities most effectively to respond to emerging issues and opportunities as they occur - with a compelling narrative that brings their people and customers along with them!"
"I would add:
- Business architecture facilitates regulatory accountability and audit for business compliance
- Business architecture enables security compliance by identifying threads of business capabilities shared across the enterprise (who is using it and where?)"
"To show the art of the possible - what can be unlocked - what value could be created by changing your operating model, people, processes and supply chain - what pain points could be addressed and how it would drive better results for your people and the planet if you went on to execute on changes it surfaces."
"The value of business architecture is the creation of a communication tool to assist all stakeholders to know the direction they should be rowing in. Stakeholders should take appropriate actions based on the stake they have in the business or effort."
"The value of the business architecture is to achieve the business plan, whatever it is."
"In one sentence: ”Business architecture provides a consolidated and contextualized depiction of planned business activity as an essential part of enterprise architecture which has a broader aim to ensure business integration at the operational level.”
"I'd add: having well defined strategic objective(s) -- which are actionable, scoped, time bound and has outcomes specified. If done right, it makes all the difference. This is that initial step which shapes success with execution and everything that follows. Getting alignment across stakeholders is another thing!"
"In addition to the three bullets originally stated, business architecture helps to facilitate an informed decision on the right technical changes to achieve desired business outcomes (e.g., especially important across key value streams within an organization."
"If business architecture is about a movement, then movements are always in some way also about people. So, if the value of business architecture is facilitating strategy execution, evolving the organization and informing decision making, then it is most certainly tied to people."
"The value proposition exceeds the bounds of IT, which is where most business architects find themselves. Movement comes from motivation, which comes from inspiration, which comes from vision. We live for the "Oh I see!" moment when the dreams of leaders become the execution of of the business."
Submit your ideas to info@bizarchmastery.com and we'll publish your thoughts as well!