Why does it make sense, and the timing is right for redefining business architecture? Forget the pundits, with deep roots in IT and mostly removed from practical experience, pontificating from the rooftops about what is business architecture and coming up with a rigid definition, mickey mouse mappings, and arcane terminology.

We at Capstera believe that business architecture should be more than boxes and arrows and a series of visual models that are too high of a level that it is hard to attribute any significance to them, except as wall art.

Here are some ways business architecture and business architects can earn their keep and move the profession from an appendage of IT to a true blue business impact function.

What questions should business architecture and business architects strive to answer?

• How do we operationalize strategy into execution?
• What is the impact of the target operating model on foundational elements of the business – people, process, technology, and information?
• What capabilities must evolve (or devolve) to attain business goals and objectives?
• Are we investing in the right projects and the right capabilities to move the needle?
• What is the level of current technology enablement of capabilities and processes and coverage, satisfaction, redundancy, and replication?
• What capabilities, assets, processes, and technologies can be cross-leveraged across multiple business units?
• What cost optimization opportunities exist by rationalizing the business and IT landscape?
• Given the existing and aspirational capabilities, what white space opportunities can be company target?

If the business architecture teams were to respond to the questions above, here is how their role will evolve:

Redefining Business Architecture Leads to the following: 

• Distill nuggets of wisdom from disparate data for the leadership for strategic decision-making.
• Interpreters and elaborators of strategy to make it actionable across the value chain.
• Modelers of business who encapsulate not just the logical and physical capabilities/assets but also the intellectual assets/capabilities.
• Analysis of projects and initiatives to fathom the value derived to advance the corporate agenda
• A bridge between strategy, technology, and operations.
• Develop common artifacts and blueprints that businesses, technology, operations, and leadership can use.
• Drive transformation efforts by optimizing the dimensions of people, processes, capability, information, and technology.

There is more to be said on how business architects can play a key role – provided the practitioners step outside the bubble and shed the image of business architects as those guys/girls that produce a lot of boxes and arrows.

Do you agree with our suggestion about redefining business architecture? 

Please check out Capstera Store for business architecture tools, templates, models, and other related artifacts.