You’re leading a Business Architecture team. What are the most important things to consider?

The role of business architecture in a product delivery organization is crucial for driving growth, innovation and compliance. This is enabled by the focus this practice has on business strategy, culture and management and not just technology needs. Business Architecture should prioritize creating value for customers by understanding their needs and expectations across the entire customer journey. In fintech especially, value is realized by integrating with specialized partners so the architectural approach must enable seamless collaboration and integration with the ecosystem. Business architecture should also help model information flows and control frameworks to help organizations comply with the regulatory needs out-of-the-box.

From my experience, establishing a clear vision and achievable goals for a Business Architecture team involves understanding the organisational strategy, identifying business needs, and articulating a compelling vision aligned with the organisation's goals. It's essential to set specific, measurable, and time-bound objectives, communicate them effectively to team members, and continuously monitor progress while remaining adaptable to changing circumstances. By following these steps, leaders can ensure that the Business Architecture team contributes effectively to the organisation's success.

Leading a business architecture team requires clear vision, effective communication, and the empowerment of team members. Below is a list of key items on which clear understanding is required: - Business Role Business Interface Business Actor Business Collaboration Business Service Business Function Business Process Business Event Business Interaction Business Object Contract Representation Product

The vision and scope of BA are closely tied to changes in the Business Model: understanding how customers derive value, what services they do and will acquire, and how the organisation facilitates the flow and functions necessary for the Business Model. This encompasses a broader perspective where strategic alignment is crucial, linking strategies and goals to prioritised investments. BA represents the business aspect of EA, focusing not on IT and principles, but rather on the business objectives. The primary aim of BA is to foster decision support for business success. BA must align vision and scope to exec leaders, and use the toolbox of BA to provide the deliverables, the mappings and the big-picture insights.

1. Define the Vision and Scope - Significance: Establishes the direction and boundaries of the business architecture efforts. It aligns the team and stakeholders around a common goal and sets expectations. - Strategies: Engage with senior leadership to ensure the vision aligns with overall business objectives. Use workshops and brainstorming sessions to refine this vision and make it actionable.

Create a creative and empowered culture to try things out. Talk to stakeholders to see what problems you can help them solve Balance your team’s approach between adding value and adding Business Architecture rigour. Bring in new people to learn from experienced team members and add different perspectives. Take time to appreciate everyone in the team.

To build a robust Business Architecture (BA) team, it's essential to have individuals who collectively wear multiple hats, covering a wide range of skills. Business Architecture serves to offer a comprehensive view for informed decisions and strategic alignment. Therefore, the BA team must deliver these outcomes by possessing all the necessary skills to facilitate dialog, discussions and convert this into useful information.

The first and most important deliverable of a Business Architecture is the one page business architecture illustrating its key functions interconnected by key business flows. Then one has to map the business functions and flows to the techology and people organisation that realises them. That will ensure the link to EA.

It is crucial to build a diverse team with the right mix of skills and expertise in areas such as business analysis, process modelling, technology architecture, and domain knowledge relevant to the organisation's industry.

2. Build the Team Culture - Significance: A strong team culture fosters collaboration, innovation, and resilience. It helps in attracting and retaining talent. - Strategies: Encourage open communication, recognize achievements, and promote a learning environment. Build trust through transparency and regular team-building activities.

Business Architecture engagements are focussed on the scenarios. Thinking through the possible scenarios where you may be called to help, would enable you to define your teams' approach, framework and techniques. At the minimum, having a set of basic BA domain models, a repository to capture information from the engagements and a quality assurance process is a must for success of the team.

Business architecture can drive the application architecture design by 2-step process of decomposing business process into business functions/capabilities and then aggregating them into microservices, modules or applications. Using a common notation of business processes, say BPMN, is important so that business processes can be documented and presented in a standard manner. To facilitate application decomposition, making input-process-output clear and abstracting the business processes using business objects (master or transaction data entities) can be helpful.

3. Establish the Methods and Standards - Significance: Consistent methods and standards ensure quality and efficiency in deliverables. They enable repeatability and scalability in business architecture practices. - Strategies: Adopt industry best practices and frameworks (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman) tailored to your organization's needs. Regularly review and update these to reflect changes in the business environment.

A pragmatic and outcome-focused approach should be the initial step. Gathering the team to align on the specific deliverables before their production is essential. Without consensus on the Business Architecture (BA) deliverables among the team and stakeholders, the team may veer off in unforeseen directions, resulting in limited value. It's crucial to remember that Business Architecture aims to provide the broader perspective, working closely with Business Analysts.

3. Establish the Methods and Standards - Adopt Frameworks and Methodologies: Leverage existing frameworks (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman Framework) and methodologies that suit your organization's needs. Customize these approaches to fit the specific context and culture of your organization. - Define Standards: Set clear standards for documentation, processes, and architectural models. Ensure these standards promote clarity, consistency, and efficiency across all business architecture activities. - Tooling: Select and implement tools that support the methods and standards you’ve established, such as EA modeling tools, to facilitate collaboration and documentation.

4. Manage the Resources and Risks - Significance: Effective resource management ensures that the team has the necessary tools and personnel to achieve its objectives. Risk management identifies potential obstacles to success early on. - Strategies: Develop a resource allocation plan that aligns with project priorities. Use risk assessment frameworks to identify, analyze, and mitigate risks proactively.

Business Architecture must not be an island on its own. It is important to see Business Architecture in the bigger picture of enterprise architecture and enterprise risk management. At the core of enterprise architecture management is the minimization of all types of risk to facilitate the conversion from ideas and strategies into implemented initiatives. Risk is a pivotal element in initiative planning and decision-making, equally is cost, systems and technology modernisation, so the alignment provided by Business Architects across different business areas is a key contributor.

4. Manage the Resources and Risks - Resource Allocation: Ensure that both human and financial resources are efficiently allocated to support business architecture activities. Prioritize initiatives based on strategic importance and return on investment. - Risk Management: Identify potential risks to your business architecture initiatives, including technological, operational, and financial risks. Develop strategies to mitigate these risks. - Agility and Flexibility: Be prepared to adjust resource allocation in response to changing priorities and unforeseen challenges.

Look for opportunities to solve a concrete concern for someone who can champion your results to the broader organization. Even if you don't have all the components and methods down, prove the value of the thinking and the application.

The most important thing is to deliver value to the Customer, which results in value to the business. That is Porter's Value Chain.

5. Deliver the Value and Outcomes - Significance: The ultimate goal of business architecture is to create value for the organization. This requires a focus on outcomes rather than just outputs. - Strategies: Establish clear metrics for success and regularly track progress against these metrics. Communicate the value delivered in terms stakeholders understand and appreciate.

To deliver value and outcomes means agreeing on what to deliver, and then delivering it! It is not enough to just talk and discuss. To lead a team in Business Architecture, you need to clearly articulate the deliverables to be provided within the planning horizon, next one etc. By aligning the team's charter, the team can deliver outcomes through a modern EA Portal to ensure the knowledge base for BA work is updated in the global EA Portal. Then, track the number of updates, users, and decisions provided by the team's contributions. Outcomes are more important than effort and output.

5. Deliver the Value and Outcomes - Measurable Outcomes: Define what success looks like for each initiative, with specific, measurable outcomes. Use performance metrics and KPIs to track progress. - Communicate Value: Regularly communicate the achievements and value generated by the business architecture initiatives to stakeholders and the wider organization. - Alignment with Business Goals: Ensure that the outcomes of business architecture efforts are clearly aligned with business goals, demonstrating direct benefits such as cost savings, efficiency improvements, or enhanced customer satisfaction.

6. Learn and Improve - Significance: Continuous improvement is vital in a rapidly changing business environment. Learning from both successes and failures ensures the team remains adaptive and innovative. - Strategies: Implement a structured process for lessons learned. Encourage a mindset of experimentation and learning. Use feedback loops from stakeholders to refine approaches.

6. Learn and Improve - Feedback Loops: Establish mechanisms for receiving feedback from stakeholders, project teams, and end-users. Use this feedback to inform continuous improvement. - Post-Implementation Reviews: Conduct reviews after completing initiatives to identify lessons learned, what worked well, and what could be improved. Apply these insights to future projects. - Stay Informed: Keep abreast of industry trends, technological advancements, and best practices in business architecture to continuously refine and improve your approaches.

- Understand your organization and be prepared to be the change manager. Not everyone will be on board. Most organizations have never understood the role of business architecture. Finding allies, Guiding and training, and showing quick wins in an area would be some of the ways to build the foundations of BA

Senior leadership support is critical to the success and I would argue this is the first step to any successful business architecture practice. Otherwise you will feel like climbing a steep mountain on your own with no support. I highly recommend to look for leaders who understand the value of business architecture before starting this journey.

Business Architecture plays a vital role in realizing the EA's ambition of achieving alignment with both the tactical and strategic goals of the business. It's not a matter of choosing one over the other; rather, it's about ensuring alignment to drive the future development of the business while optimizing cost of current business operations. Collaboration with other architectures is essential for EA to establish the right guidelines encompassing principles, technologies, necessary renewal, and cost and risk reduction. When the BA team focuses on enhancing deliveries to ensure increasingly better alignment in decision-making, the architecture function can offer guidance to steer changes in roadmap and initiative planning.

Effective communication is also of critical importance in ensuring that all team members are aligned with the vision and goals of the Business Architecture team. This involves regular and transparent communication channels such as team meetings, workshops, and one-on-one discussions to convey the vision, objectives, and progress updates. Leaders must ensure that communication is clear, consistent, and inclusive, fostering an environment where team members feel engaged and motivated to contribute towards common goals. Additionally, feedback mechanisms should be established to encourage open dialogue and address any concerns or questions that may arise, fostering a culture of collaboration and shared understanding within the team.

7. Strategic Alignment - Significance: Ensuring that business architecture initiatives are in lockstep with the organization's strategic goals amplifies their impact and relevance. - Strategies: Regularly revisit the organization's strategic plan and align business architecture activities accordingly. Foster strong relationships with strategic planning and execution teams to ensure synergy. By focusing on these core areas, you can guide your Business Architecture team to effectively support the organization's strategic objectives, navigate challenges, and seize opportunities in a dynamic business landscape.