GreenEA - Business Architecture View

This article is building on the introduction to the topic of Green Enterprise Architecture that you can find here.

Sustainability is a business-driven activity, so the Business Architecture in the entry point in the the Enterprise Architecture world.

As the organisation pursues certain sustainability goals, we need to look at the Motivation part of the Business Architecture, if we follow the TOGAF Content Metamodel. Drivers, Goals, Objectives and Measures are the key ingredient and we can look at the OMG Business Motivation Model and Balanced Scorecard for additional guidance on structure and terminology. It is important to understand that the traditional business metrics around revenue, cost and profit, will only be part of a broader business value portfolio that the organization needs to define as part of their business and/or sustainability strategy. Besides the UN Sustainable Development Goals there are many sustainability frameworks out there, from which the organisation can pick and choose the relevant goals and objectives. Some examples are the Global Reporting Initiative, Science Bases Targents and the Beyond GDP Initiative. Here EA can help shape how goals and objectives are documented and are linked in the other parts of the Enterprise Architecture. GreenEA will enable to answer questions like "What business process have an impact my sustainbility objective X?", "What data sources are used to calculate sustainability metrics Y?" or "What IT infrastructure contributes to my CO2e emissions?".

From an organizational perspective there is certainly demand for new skills, maybe even for new roles and organizational units. Often neglected and challenging to implement are changes to mindset and behaviour. Those could be defined as goals and linked to inititatives, like trainings or communities of interest, that support the required change. Of course all this comes with changes to HR systems, training platforms and other digital enablers of change.

In order to achieve its sustainability goals an organization may need to change existing products or service or develop new once. Product and services are captured in the Business Architecture and linked to the goals and objectives defined in the Motivation part of the Enterprise Architecture. New or changed products and services are the base for business model innovation, including the creation of new revenue streams, improved branding and better employee acquisition and retention. Business process also may need to change to bring sustainability into the organisation, including the evalution if the existing process metrics are appropriate or need to be enhance with sustainability metrics. Last but not least new business capabilities or function maybe necessary to achieve the defined sustainability goals.

Although what I described above may not cover all the area where sustainability appears in the Business Architecture, it should give a good impression how Enterprise Architecture can help with sustainability strategy execution on the business side. In the next part of this mini-series we will cover the Information Architecture domain and sustainability data.