Building a Strong Foundation with Business Architecture

​In today's rapidly changing business environment, organizations are constantly looking for ways to improve their operations, reduce costs, and stay ahead of the competition. To achieve these goals, many organizations have turned to enterprise architecture frameworks like TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework).

TOGAF provides a comprehensive approach to enterprise architecture that can help organizations 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 organization. By understanding the organization's business strategy, goals, and stakeholders, and 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 organizational structure. It establishes relationships among business views, strategies, products, policies, initiatives, and stakeholders, and links business elements to business goals and elements of other domains.

Knowledge of Business Architecture is essential for architecture work in any other domain and is the first architecture activity that should be undertaken, unless already included in other organizational processes. ​Business Architecture is Phase B of the Architecture Development Model (ADM) as shown in the figure below.
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Architecture Development Model

​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 is necessary to re-use existing material as much as possible. Existing Architecture Definitions can be used as a starting point, and it is essential to gather and analyze only the information that allows informed decisions to be made relevant to the scope of this architecture effort.

​The focus should be on building a complete picture without going into unnecessary detail if the effort is to support an existing Business Architecture. However, if the effort is focused on defining new business processes, it may require a lot of detailed work.

Objectives of Business Architecture

 
The objectives of Business Architecture (Phase B) are as follows:
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• To create a Target Business Architecture that outlines the necessary operations for the enterprise to reach its business objectives and address the Statement of Architecture Work and concerns of stakeholders, while also aligning with the strategic drivers presented in the Architecture Vision.
• To pinpoint Architecture Roadmap components by identifying gaps between the Baseline and Target Business Architectures.

Inputs to the Business Architecture

There are a number of inputs required to complete the Business Architecture, both, Non-Architectural and Architectural that we’ll explore in this section.
 
Non-Architectural Inputs
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• Request for Architecture Work
• Business principles, business goals, and business drivers
• Capability Assessment
• Communications Plan

 
 Architectural Inputs
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• Organizational Model for Enterprise Architecture, including:
  • Scope of organization impacted
  • Maturity assessment, gaps, and resolution approach
  • Roles and responsibilities for the architecture team
  • Constraints on architecture work
  • Budget requirements
  • Governance and support strategy
• Tailored Architecture Framework, including:
  • Tailored architecture method
  • Tailored architecture content (deliverables and artifacts)
  • Configured and deployed tools
• Approved Statement of Architecture Work
• Architecture Principles including business principles, when pre-existing
• Enterprise Continuum (We’ll discuss this in a future article)
• Architecture Repository including:
  • Re-usable building blocks
  • Publicly available reference models
  • Organization-specific reference models
  • Organization standards
• Architecture Vision, including:
  • Problem description
  • Objective of the Statement of Architecture Work
  • Summary views
  • Business Scenario (optional)
  • Refined key high-level stakeholder requirements
• Draft Architecture Definition Document, which may include Baseline and/or Target Architectures of any architecture domain.​​

A Step by Step Guide to Business Architecture

During teh Business Architecture phase (Phase B), it is necessary to develop new models that accurately describe the business needs in detail. Any existing business artifacts that will be transferred and maintained in the target environment may have already been defined in previous architectural work, but if not, they should be defined here.

The sequence and timing of the tasks in Phase B should be adjusted based on the specific circumstances, and should comply with the established Architecture Governance. In particular, it is important to determine whether to prioritize the development of Baseline or Target Architecture based on the situation at hand. 
 
The steps in the Business Architecture phase are as follows:
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1. Select reference models, viewpoints, and tools
2. Develop Baseline Business Architecture Description
3. Develop Target Business Architecture Description
4. Perform gap analysis
5. Define candidate roadmap components
6. Resolve impacts across the Architecture Landscape
7. Conduct formal stakeholder review
8. Finalize the Business Architecture
9. Create/Update the Architecture Definition Document

Select Reference Models, Viewpoints, and Tools

 
The architect should choose relevant Business Architecture resources such as reference models and patterns, based on the business drivers and stakeholder concerns. They should also select appropriate Business Architecture viewpoints, such as operations, management, and financial, to demonstrate how the concerns of stakeholders are being addressed.

Additionally, the architect should identify suitable tools and techniques for capturing, modeling, and analyzing the Business Architecture, based on the selected viewpoints, ranging from simple documents and spreadsheets to more advanced modeling tools like activity models, business process models, and use-case models, depending on the level of sophistication required.

​The Overall Modeling Process

The process of business modeling and strategy assessments can be effective in establishing the desired state of an organization's Business Architecture. The outcomes from this activity can then be used to define the necessary business capabilities, organizational structure, and value streams that will bridge the gaps between the current and target state. The existing frameworks for these maps should be utilized, focusing on identifying gaps and mapping business value to achieve the Target Business Architecture.

To support each viewpoint, the appropriate models should be chosen to fulfill the specific requirements using the selected tool or method. It is crucial to ensure that all stakeholder concerns are addressed, and in case they are not covered, new models should be created to address the gaps or enhance the existing models. Business scenarios are a valuable technique that can be used iteratively at different levels of detail in the hierarchical decomposition of the Business Architecture to discover and document business requirements.
 
The following techniques can be utilized to progressively decompose a business:

• Business Capability Mapping: This technique involves identifying, categorizing, 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. We covered this in a previous article which you can read here.
• Information Mapping: The process of collecting and organizing 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.
• Organization Mapping: This technique represents the organizational structure of the business, including third-party domains. It depicts the business units, their decomposition into lower-level functions, and the organizational 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 analyzing 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 organizational units within the business. It provides a clear understanding of how business capabilities are deployed within the organization 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 organization performs to create the value being exchanged with stakeholders. It illustrates how an organization 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 vary from enterprise to enterprise and within an 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 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. Relevant Business Architecture building blocks can be identified by drawing on the Architecture Repository.
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In cases where new architecture models are needed to address stakeholder concerns, the models identified in Step 1 can be used as a guide for creating new architecture content to describe the Baseline Architecture.​

Develop 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 relevant Business Architecture building blocks should be identified as much as possible, with reference to the Architecture Repository.

In cases where new architecture models need to be developed to meet stakeholder concerns, the models identified in Step 1 should be used as a guide to produce new architecture content that describes the Target Architecture.

It may be appropriate to explore different Target Architecture options and engage stakeholders in discussions about these alternatives, using Architecture Alternatives and Trade-offs.

The Target Business Architecture will include the following:

• Organization structure: Identifying business locations and relating them to organizational units.
• Business goals and objectives:  These are for the enterprise and each organizational 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 organization providing a structured and standardized view of the data that is used in the organization's operations.
• Correlation of organization/business functions and business capabilities: Relating business capabilities to organizational units in the form of a matrix report.

Perform Gap Analysis

Ensure the accuracy and internal consistency of the architecture models by following these steps:
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• 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.
• Take note of any changes made to the viewpoints represented in the selected models from the Architecture Repository, and document them.
• 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 gap analysis, the next step is to develop a Business Architecture Roadmap. This roadmap will prioritize 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 finalizing 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:
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• Whether the Business Architecture affects any existing architectures.
• Whether recent modifications have an impact on the Business Architecture.
• Whether there are opportunities to utilize the Business Architecture work in other parts of the organization.
• 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 Formal Stakeholder Review

Review the initial motivation behind the architecture project and the Statement of Architecture Work, 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.

Finalize the Business Architecture

• Choose standards for each building block, using as much as possible from the reference models already in the Architecture Repository.
• 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 within the Architecture Repository and identify building blocks that can be reused such as working practices, roles, business relationships, job descriptions, etc. Publish them through the Architecture Repository.
• Complete all the work products, including gap analysis results.

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

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The outputs of the Business Architecture, or Phase B may include, but are not restricted to:
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• 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 organization. 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 organizations to make informed decisions about technology investments and align them with business goals. It also helps to identify opportunities for process improvement and optimization, which can result in cost savings and increased efficiency.
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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.