Business Architecture

Example of the NIH IT Enterprise Architecture Framework, where the Business architecture is
pictured as part of the enterprise architecture.
A business architecture is a part of an enterprise architecture related to corporate business, and
the documents and diagrams that describe the architectural structure of that business. People who
build business architecture are known as business architects.
Business architecture is the bridge between the enterprise business model and enterprise strategy
on one side, and the business functionality of the enterprise on the other side.

Overview
The term "business architecture" is, first of all, an architecture and used to refer to an
architectural organization of an enterprise or a business unit, architectural model or profession. A
formal definition of the first meaning is defined by the Object Management Group's Business
Architecture Working Group as follows:
"A blueprint of the enterprise that provides a common understanding of the organization
and is used to align strategic objectives and tactical demands." [1]
Business Architecture articulates the functional structure of a enterprise in terms of its business
services and business information. One of the major outcomes of Business Architecture is a set
of business capability models. The business capability is able to perform certain business
functionality and deliver business results or values under certain circumstances. The business
capability is provided by business services that state "what" the organization does while the
business processes implement business functionality and define "how" the organization can
execute its capabilities. A business capability is considered as "defined" when its business
functionality is identified and implementation resources are reserved.
By following the governance and articulating business information, the business architecture
considers all internal and external actors to an enterprise (including its customers, suppliers, and
regulators), to ensure that flow in and out of the enterprise are captured. Overall the subject of
pragmatic Business Architecture is defined in line with OASIS Reference Architecture
Foundation for SOA.

Business architecture topics

Different views of an organization
In order to develop an integrated view of an enterprise, many different views of an organization
are typically developed. The key views of the enterprise within the business architecture are:[2]

Business Strategy view : captures the strategic goals that drive an organization forward.
The goals may be decomposed into various tactical approaches for achieving these goals
and for providing traceability through the organization. These strategic goals are mapped
to metrics that provide ongoing evaluation of how successfully the organization is
achieving its goals.
Business Capabilities view : describes the business functional abilities expressed via
business services of an enterprise and the sections of the organization that would be able
performing those functions. This view further distinguishes between customer-facing
functions, supplier-related functions, core business execution functions, and business
management functions.
Business Knowledge view : establishes the shared semantics (e.g., customer, order, and
supplier) within an organization and relationships between those semantics (e.g.,
customer name, order date, supplier name). These semantics form the vocabulary that the
organization relies upon to communicate and structure the understanding of the areas they
operate within.
Business Operational view : defines the set of strategic, core and support operational
structures that transcend functional and organizational boundaries. It also sets the
boundary of the enterprise by identifying and describing external entities such as
customers, suppliers, and external systems that interact with the business. The operational
structures describe which resources and controls are involved. The lowest operational
level describes the manual and automated tasks that make up workflow.
Organizational view : captures the relationships among roles, capabilities and business
units, the decomposition of those business units into subunits, and the internal or external
management of those units.

In addition to the above views of the enterprise, the relationships connecting the aforementioned
views form the foundation of the business architecture implementation. This foundation provides
the framework that supports the achievement of key goals; planning and execution of various
business scenarios; and delivery of bottom line business value.[2]
According to ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011, the replacement for 1471-2000 - IEEE Recommended
Practice for Architectural Description, "architecture descriptions are inherently multi-viewed"
but "an architecture and an architecture description are not the same thing". Therefore,
aforementioned enterprise views can only help in defining business architecture but should not
be taken instead of it.

Disciplined approach
Business Architecture is a disciplined approach to realise business models and to serve as a
business foundation of the enterprise to enhance accountability and improve decision-making.
Business Architecture's value proposition, unlike other disciplines is to increase functional
effectiveness by mapping and modeling the business to the organization's business vision and
strategic goals.

Mapping identifies gaps between the current architectural state and target state, which
affects underlying services, processes, people, and tools.

Modeling discovers business requirements in the area of interest including stakeholders,

business entities and their relationships, and business integration points.

Business Strategy
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removed. (June 2013)
Business Architecture directly realizes business strategy. It is the foundation for subsequent
architectures (strategy embedding), where it is detailed into various aspects and disciplines. The
business strategy can consist of elements like strategy statements, organizational goals and
objectives, generic business models, etc. The strategic statements are analyzed and arranged
hierarchically, through techniques like qualitative hierarchical cluster analysis. Based on this
hierarchy the initial business architecture is realized, using general organizational structuring
methods and business administration theory, like theories on assets and resources and theories on
structuring economic activity. Based on the business architecture the construction of the
organization takes shape (figure 1: strategy embedding). During the strategy formulation phase
and as a result of the design of the business architecture, the business strategy gets better
formulated and understood as well as made more internally consistent.
The business architecture forms a significantly better basis for subsequent architectures than the
separate statements themselves. The business architecture gives direction to organizational
aspects, such as the organizational structuring (in which the responsibilities of the business
domains are assigned to individuals/business units in the organization chart or where a new
organization chart is drawn) and the administrative organization (describing for instance the
financial reconciliation mechanisms between business domains). Assigning the various business
domains to their owners (managers) also helps the further development of other architectures,
because now the managers of these domains can be involved with a specific assigned
responsibility. This leads to increased involvement of top-level managers by making them
domain-owners and well aware of their role. Detailed portions of business domains can be
developed based on the effort and support of the domain-owners involved. Business architecture
therefore is a very helpful pre-structuring device for the development, acceptance and
implementation of subsequent architectures.
The perspectives on the design of subsequent architectures are more common: Information
Technology Architecture and technical architecture. The various parts (functions, features and
concepts) of the business architecture act as a compulsory starting point for the different
subsequent architectures. Business architecture models shed light on the scantily elaborated
relationships between business strategy and business design and organization throughout the
enterprise.

Approaches and frameworks for business architecture

Zachman Framework
Rows 1 & 2 of the Zachman Framework deal with Business Architecture discipline.

The Object Management Group

Modeling standards of the Object Management Group (OMG), including the Unified Modeling
Language (UML), Model Driven Architecture (MDA), Business Motivation Model (BMM),
Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR) and the Business Process Modeling
Notation (BPMN), enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and
other processes, including IT Systems Modeling and Business Process Management.

The OMG established the Business Architecture Working Group[3] (BAWG) in December 2007
to pursue the development of standards to support the Business Architecture community. The
group has begun an effort to catalog business scenarios and to capture a library of business
techniques that will be used to isolate and prioritize areas of work. This initiative has as a key
part of its mission the interlinking and unification of existing standards to accommodate the
demands for integrated end-to-end business analytics.
The BAWG conducts periodic Business Architecture Information Days at the OMG's quarterly
Technical Meeting as part of an outreach effort to bring interested practitioner and vendor
organizations into the standards process.
The BAWG Modeling Workgroup is currently working to develop a standard framework for
business architecture that is aligned with the Business Architecture Guild[4] Business
Architecture Body of Knowledge Handbook.

The Business Architecture Guild

Founded in late 2010, the Guild opened up membership in the fall of 2011 based on the initial
release of the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge Handbook (BIZBOK). BIZBOK
1.0, delivered in skeletal form on August 21, 2011, [5] has garnered significant industry attention.
With the release of version 2.0 of the BIZBOK on January 27, 2012 the Business Architecture
Guild delivered the first complete set of writings covering the outline delivered as part of the
organization's initial vision. Publication of BIZBOK 3.0 is tentatively scheduled for
November, 2012. A preliminary outline of the contents has been publicly posted.[6]
The primary purpose of the Business Architecture Guild [4] is to promote best practices and
expand the knowledgebase of the business architecture discipline." The Guild is a not for profit,
international membership organization for practitioners and others interested in the developing
the field of business architecture. With members on six continents, a strong Advisory Board and
a growing number of business partners, the Guild will continue to serve as a focal point for the
evolving practices and disciplines of business architecture.