Building a Strong Foundation with Business Architecture

In today's rapidly changing business environment, organisations are constantly looking for ways to improve their operations, reduce costs, and stay ahead of the competition. To achieve these goals, many organisations have turned to enterprise architecture frameworks like TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), as well as other frameworks specific to business architecture. In this article, we'll focus on the TOGAF framework.

TOGAF provides a comprehensive approach to enterprise architecture that can help organisations align their IT strategies with their business goals, improve their business processes, and increase their overall efficiency. One of the key phases in the TOGAF framework is the Business Architecture phase. This phase focuses on the development of a high-level business architecture for an organisation. By understanding the organisation's business goals, strategy, initiatives, products, stakeholders and metrics, as well as identifying the business functions, processes, capabilities, and information required to support them, the Business Architecture phase provides a solid foundation for the rest of the enterprise architecture process.

Overview of Business Architecture

Business Architecture is a comprehensive representation of various aspects of a business, including capabilities, end-to-end value delivery, information, and organisational structure. It establishes relationships between business strategies, policies, initiatives, products, stakeholders and metrics, and also links the business architecture domain to other enterprise architecture domains, including data, applications and technology. Knowledge of Business Architecture is essential for architecture work in any other domain and is the first architecture activity that should be undertaken, unless it is already included in other organisational processes.?

The Business Architecture provides insight into how to achieve business goals and objectives, which is not necessarily explained by the business strategy. The amount of work required depends on the enterprise environment, and it certainly pays to re-use existing material as much as possible.?Indeed, existing Architecture Definitions can be used as a starting point, and it is essential to gather and analyse only the information that allows informed decisions to be made relevant to the scope of the architecture effort. We don't want to be wasting time gathering data that is irrelevant to the overall Architecture Vision.

Objectives of Business Architecture

? The objectives of Business Architecture are as follows:

• To create a Target Business Architecture that outlines the necessary operations for the enterprise to reach its business objectives and address the concerns of stakeholders, while also aligning with the strategic drivers presented in the Architecture Vision.
• To identify?Architecture Roadmap components by identifying gaps between the Baseline and Target Business Architecture.

A Step by Step Guide to Business Architecture

During the Business Architecture phase, crafting precise models to articulate business needs is an imperative. Existing business artifacts that will be transferred and maintained in the target environment may have already been defined in prior architectural work, but if not, this is the opportune time to define them. In particular, it is important to determine whether to prioritise the development of the Baseline or the Target Architecture based on the situation at hand.?The steps in the Business Architecture phase are as follows:

1. Select reference models, viewpoints, and tools.
2. Develop a desciption of the Baseline Business Architecture.
3. Develop a desciption of the Target Business Architecture.
4. Perform a gap analysis.
5. Define candidate roadmap components.
6. Resolve impacts across the Architecture Landscape.
7. Conduct a formal stakeholder review.
8. Finalise the Business Architecture.
9. Create or update the Architecture Definition Document.

Select Reference Models, Viewpoints, and Tools

The?Overall Modeling Process

The process of business modeling and strategy assessments can be effective in establishing the desired state of an organisation's Business Architecture. The outcomes from this activity can then be used to define the necessary business capabilities, organisational structure, and value streams that will bridge the gaps between the current and target state. The existing frameworks for these maps should be utilised, focusing on identifying gaps and mapping business value to achieve the Target Business Architecture. It is crucial to ensure that all stakeholder concerns are addressed.

The following techniques?can be utilised to progressively decompose a business:

• Business Capability Mapping:?This technique involves identifying, categorising, and decomposing the business capabilities necessary for the business to provide value to one or more stakeholders. It is an essential activity in the development of the Business Architecture.
• Information Mapping:?The process of collecting and organising the most important information concepts and their relationships that matter to the business. It helps in identifying the key information assets and their relationships to other business elements.
• Organisation Mapping:?This technique represents the organisational structure of the business, including third-party domains. It depicts the business units, their decomposition into lower-level functions, and the organisational relationships (unit-to-unit and mapping to business capabilities, locations, and other attributes).
• Process Modeling:?The activity of articulating business processes of an enterprise to enable analysis and improvement. It provides a structured approach to identifying and analysing business processes, helping to identify gaps, redundancies, and inefficiencies.
• Structured Analysis:?This technique identifies the key business capabilities within the scope of the architecture and maps those capabilities onto business functions and organisational units within the business. It provides a clear understanding of how business capabilities are deployed within the organisation and how they support business functions.
• Use-case Analysis:?This technique is used to identify the requirements of a system or task to be completed from a user's perspective. It helps in the identification of functional and non-functional requirements and in determining the key actors and their interactions with the system.
• Value Stream Mapping:?This technique involves breaking down the activities that an organisation performs to create the value being exchanged with stakeholders. It illustrates how an organisation delivers value in the context of a specific set of stakeholders and leverages business capabilities to create stakeholder value and align with other aspects of the Target Business Architecture.

The level and rigor of decomposition needed varies from enterprise to enterprise. The architect should consider the enterprise's goals, objectives, scope, and purpose of the Enterprise Architecture effort to determine the appropriate level of decomposition. Value stream maps help in identifying the most important activities and their interrelationships, providing a basis for analysis and improvement.

Develop the Baseline Business Architecture Description

To support the development of the Target Business Architecture, it is necessary to first develop a Baseline Description of the current Business Architecture. The level of detail required for this description will depend on how much of the existing business elements will be carried over into the new architecture and whether existing Architecture Descriptions exist.

Develop the Target Business Architecture Description

Create a Target Description for the Business Architecture, as needed to support the Architecture Vision. The level of detail and scope should depend on the relevance of the business elements to achieving the Target Architecture Vision, and whether architectural descriptions exist. The Target Business Architecture will include the following:

• Organisation structure: Identifying business locations and relating them to organisational units.
• Business goals and objectives:? These are for the enterprise and each organisational unit.
• Business functions:?A?detailed, recursive step involving successive decomposition of major functional areas into sub-functions.
• Business capabilities: The abilities that a business needs to possess or exchange to achieve its goals and objectives.
• Business services:?The services that support the business by encapsulating a unique "elements of business behavior"; a service offered external to the enterprise may be supported by business services.
• Products:?The output generated by the business to be offered to customers; products include materials and/or services.
• Business processes:?These include measures and deliverables.
• Business roles:?These include the development and modification of skills requirements.
• Business data model: A?representation of the data entities and relationships in an organisation providing?a structured and standardized view of the data that is used in the organization's operations.
• Correlation of organisation/business functions and business capabilities: Relating?business capabilities to organisational units in the form of a matrix report.

Perform a Gap Analysis

Ensure the accuracy and internal consistency of the architecture models by following these steps:

• Conduct trade-off analysis to resolve any conflicts that may arise among different views.
• Validate that the models align with the principles, objectives, and constraints of the project.
• Test the architecture models for completeness by comparing them against the requirements.
• Use the gap analysis technique to identify any gaps that exist between the baseline and target architecture.

Define Candidate Roadmap Components

After creating the Baseline Architecture, Target Architecture, and conducting a gap analysis, the next step is to develop a Business Architecture Roadmap. This roadmap will prioritise the activities needed in the upcoming phases. The initial roadmap created will serve as a basis for a more detailed, consolidated, cross-discipline roadmap to be defined in the Opportunities & Solutions phase.

Resolve Impacts Across the Architecture Landscape

After finalising the Business Architecture, it is crucial to assess any broader impacts or implications. This involves reviewing other architecture artifacts within the Architecture Landscape to determine:

• Whether the Business Architecture affects any existing architectures.
• Whether recent modifications have an impact on the Business Architecture.
• Whether there are opportunities to utilise the Business Architecture work in other parts of the organisation.
• Whether the Business Architecture has an impact on other projects, including planned and ongoing ones.
• Whether other projects, including planned and ongoing ones, affect the Business Architecture.

Conduct a Formal Stakeholder Review

Review the initial motivation behind the architecture project, and compare them with the proposed Business Architecture to ensure that it aligns with the purpose of supporting subsequent work in other architecture domains. Modify the proposed Business Architecture only if required.

Finalise the Business Architecture

• Choose standards for each building block, and leverage reference models that may have already been created previously.
• Thoroughly document each building block.
• Conduct a final cross-check of the architecture against the business goals, and document the reasoning behind the building block decisions in the architecture document.
• Create a final report on the requirements traceability.
• Document the final mapping of the architecture and identify building blocks that can be reused such as working practices, roles, business relationships, job descriptions, etc.

Create the Architecture Definition Document

• Document the rationale for building block decisions in the Architecture Definition Document.
• Prepare the appropriate business sections of the Architecture Definition Document related to the intended scope and use of the architecture.

If appropriate, use reports and/or graphics generated by modeling tools to demonstrate key views of the architecture. Route the document for review by relevant stakeholders, and incorporate feedback.

Outputs from the Business Architecture Phase

The outputs of the Business Architecture may include, but are not restricted to:

• Refined and updated versions of the Architecture Vision phase deliverables, where applicable, including the Statement of Work, validated business principles, goals and drivers as well as architecture principles.
• Draft Architecture Definition Document including the baseline business architecture and target business architecture as discussed previously.
• Draft Architecture Requirements Specification
• Business Architecture components of an Architecture Roadmap

Summary

Business Architecture is a crucial component of any successful enterprise architecture program. It provides a clear understanding of the business goals and drivers and helps to align them with the overall architecture vision. By defining the business strategy, goals, and objectives, Business Architecture serves as a foundation for subsequent architecture work in other domains, such as data, application, and technology.

Effective Business Architecture requires a thorough understanding of the enterprise environment and a collaborative approach that involves key stakeholders from across the organisation. The use of established frameworks, such as TOGAF, can help to ensure that Business Architecture is developed in a structured and consistent manner. By providing a clear understanding of the business requirements and drivers, Business Architecture enables organisations to make informed decisions about technology investments and align them with business goals. It also helps to identify opportunities for process improvement and optimisation, which can result in cost savings and increased efficiency.

In summary, Business Architecture is an essential element of any enterprise architecture program, providing a comprehensive view of the business that enables informed decision-making and supports the successful implementation of architecture solutions.