Business architecture
Encyclopedia
A business architecture is a part of an enterprise architecture
related to corporate business
, and the document
s and diagram
s that describe that architectural structure of business. People who build business architecture are known as Business Architects.
Business architecture bridges between the enterprise business model
and enterprise
strategy on one side and the business functionality of the enterprise
on another side.
or profession
. A formal definition of the first meaning is defined by the Object Management Group
's Business Architecture Working Group as follows:
Business Architecture articulates the functional structure of an enterprise
in terms of its business services and business information
. The business capability is ability to perform certain business functionality and deliver business results or values. 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. By following the governance and articulating business information, the business architecture considers all internal and external actor
s to an enterprise (including its customers, suppliers, and regulators), to ensure that flow in and out of the enterprise are captured.
of an enterprise, many different views of an organization are typically developed. The key views of the enterprise within the business architecture are:
In addition to the above views of the enterprise, the relationships connecting the aforementioned views form the foundation of the business architecture. 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.
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.
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 led to increased involvement of top-level management, being 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 for subsequent design next to organization are more common: information architecture
, technical architecture
, functional architecture. The various parts (functions, features and concepts) of the business architecture act as a compulsory starting point for the different subsequent architectures. It pre-structures other architectures. Business architecture models shed light on the scantly elaborated relationships between business strategy and business design. We will illustrate the value of business architecture in a case study
deal with Business Architecture discipline.
(OMG), including the Unified Modeling Language
(UML), Model Driven Architecture (MDA) 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 (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 conducted a Business Architecture Information Day on September 23, 2008 in Orlando at the OMG's quarterly Technical Meeting as part of an outreach effort to bring interested practitioner and vendor organizations into the standards process.
is a community-based effort for describing methods and tools used by architecture. It is being developed and continuously improved by the Open Group, a consortium of interested individuals and companies involved in information technology.
Although the Open Group limits their framework to be used to develop Information Systems only, their framework includes “Business Architecture” as one of the four "domains" of architecture. The other three domains are Application Architecture, Data Architecture and Technology Architecture. TOGAF describes business architecture as "the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes".
A Business Architecture describes the functional aspects of the business domain instead of the IT domain. TOGAF defines four dimensions, three of which can be considered relevant to Business Architecture:
(eXtended Business Modeling Language) framework. This framework advocates the following Business Architectural components:
Additionally, xBML provides a detailed "instruction set" (or formal rule set) that enables the practitioner to build content for the framework in a consistent, repeatable and verifiable manner. There are approximately 55 rules that ensure consistency in output generated, unlike other frameworks available.
off-the-shelf
set of structures, processes, activities, knowledge and skills.
Enterprise architecture
An enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...
related to corporate business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
, and the document
Document
The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...
s and diagram
Diagram
A diagram is a two-dimensional geometric symbolic representation of information according to some visualization technique. Sometimes, the technique uses a three-dimensional visualization which is then projected onto the two-dimensional surface...
s that describe that architectural structure of business. People who build business architecture are known as Business Architects.
Business architecture bridges between the enterprise business model
Business model
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value...
and enterprise
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
strategy on one side and the business functionality of the enterprise
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
on another 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 modelBusiness model
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value...
or profession
Profession
A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....
. A formal definition of the first meaning is defined by the Object Management Group
Object Management Group
Object Management Group is a consortium, originally aimed at setting standards for distributed object-oriented systems, and is now focused on modeling and model-based standards.- Overview :...
'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."
Business Architecture articulates the functional structure of an enterprise
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
in terms of its business services and business information
Business information
Business information is one of the three main segments of the information industry. The other two segments are scientific, technical and medical and educational and training content....
. The business capability is ability to perform certain business functionality and deliver business results or values. The business capability is provided by business services that state "what" the organization
Organization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
does while the business processes implement business functionality and define "how" the organization can execute its capabilities. By following the governance and articulating business information, the business architecture considers all internal and external actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s to an enterprise (including its customers, suppliers, and regulators), to ensure that flow in and out of the enterprise are captured.
Different views of an organization
In order to develop an integrated viewView model
A view model or viewpoints framework in systems engineering, software engineering, and enterprise engineering is a framework which defines a coherent set of views to be used in the construction of a system architecture, software architecture, or enterprise architecture. A view is a representation...
of an enterprise, many different views of an organization are typically developed. The key views of the enterprise within the business architecture are:
- 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. 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.
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
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 and/or applied 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 further developed, 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 led to increased involvement of top-level management, being 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 for subsequent design next to organization are more common: information architecture
Information Architecture
Information architecture is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming,...
, technical architecture
Technical architecture
Technical architecture is one of several architecture domains that form the pillars of an enterprise architecture or solution architecture. It describes the structure and behaviour of the technology infrastructure of an enterprise, solution or system...
, functional architecture. The various parts (functions, features and concepts) of the business architecture act as a compulsory starting point for the different subsequent architectures. It pre-structures other architectures. Business architecture models shed light on the scantly elaborated relationships between business strategy and business design. We will illustrate the value of business architecture in a case study
Zachman Framework
Rows 1 & 2 of the Zachman FrameworkZachman framework
The Zachman Framework is an Enterprise Architecture framework for enterprise architecture, which provides a formal and highly structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise...
deal with Business Architecture discipline.
The Object Management Group
Modeling standards of the Object Management GroupObject Management Group
Object Management Group is a consortium, originally aimed at setting standards for distributed object-oriented systems, and is now focused on modeling and model-based standards.- Overview :...
(OMG), including the Unified Modeling Language
Unified Modeling Language
Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
(UML), Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and the Business Process Modeling Notation
Business Process Modeling Notation
Business Process Model and Notation is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model. It was previously known as 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
Business process management
Business process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...
.
The OMG established the Business Architecture Working Group (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 conducted a Business Architecture Information Day on September 23, 2008 in Orlando 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 Open Group
The Open Group Architecture Framework of the The Open GroupThe Open Group
The Open Group is a vendor and technology-neutral industry consortium, currently with over three hundred member organizations. It was formed in 1996 when X/Open merged with the Open Software Foundation...
is a community-based effort for describing methods and tools used by architecture. It is being developed and continuously improved by the Open Group, a consortium of interested individuals and companies involved in information technology.
Although the Open Group limits their framework to be used to develop Information Systems only, their framework includes “Business Architecture” as one of the four "domains" of architecture. The other three domains are Application Architecture, Data Architecture and Technology Architecture. TOGAF describes business architecture as "the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes".
A Business Architecture describes the functional aspects of the business domain instead of the IT domain. TOGAF defines four dimensions, three of which can be considered relevant to Business Architecture:
- Scope or breadth of the enterprise or across a specific business function from end-to-end,
- Level of detail, and
- Time as-is architecture vs. to-be architecture.
eXtended Business Modeling Language
A framework for denoting Business Architecture is the xBMLXBML
xBML stands for extended Business Modeling Language and is used to define the business processes of an organization. It is based upon a 5 dimensional business framework and is uniquely supported by approximately 55 rules that govern the usage, "output" and "syntax" of the language.xBML enables...
(eXtended Business Modeling Language) framework. This framework advocates the following Business Architectural components:
- Activity (What?)
- Responsibility (Who?)
- Locality (Where?)
- Temporal governance (When?)
- Information (Which?)
- Operation (How?).
Additionally, xBML provides a detailed "instruction set" (or formal rule set) that enables the practitioner to build content for the framework in a consistent, repeatable and verifiable manner. There are approximately 55 rules that ensure consistency in output generated, unlike other frameworks available.
Industry reference models
Industry reference models are frameworks or models that provide a best practiceBest practice
A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark...
off-the-shelf
Commercial off-the-shelf
In the United States, Commercially available Off-The-Shelf is a Federal Acquisition Regulation term defining a nondevelopmental item of supply that is both commercial and sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace, and that can be procured or utilized under government contract...
set of structures, processes, activities, knowledge and skills.
- The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM), published by the TM ForumTM ForumThe TeleManagement Forum formerly the Network Management Forum, is an international non-profit industry association, for service providers and their suppliers in the information industry, the telecommunications industry and the entertainment industry.Members include telephone companies, cable...
, describes the full scope of business processes required by a service provider in the telecommunications industry, and defines key elements and how they interact.
- The Supply-Chain Operations ReferenceSupply-Chain Operations ReferenceSupply-chain operations reference-model is a process reference model developed by the management consulting firm PRTM and endorsed by the Supply-Chain Council as the cross-industry de-facto standard diagnostic tool for supply chain management...
(SCOR) is a process reference model, endorsed by the Supply-Chain CouncilSupply-Chain CouncilSupply-Chain Council is an independent non-profit organization, as the cross-industry standard for supply chain management. SCC has developed and endorsed the Supply-Chain Operations Reference -model, a process reference model for supply chain management.The SCC was organized in 1996 by Pittiglio...
as the cross-industry de facto standard diagnostic tool for supply chain management.
- The Information Technology Infrastructure LibraryInformation Technology Infrastructure LibraryThe Information Technology Infrastructure Library , is a set of good practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form , ITIL is published in a series of five core publications, each of which covers an ITSM lifecycle stage...
(ITIL) is a set of concepts and policies for managing information technology (IT) infrastructure, development and operations.
External links
- Business Architecture Working Group (BAWG), part of the Object Management GroupObject Management GroupObject Management Group is a consortium, originally aimed at setting standards for distributed object-oriented systems, and is now focused on modeling and model-based standards.- Overview :...
- Business Architecture Society (BAS), non-profit professional association
- Business Architects Association® (BAA), professional association