Articles

Business Use Case Model Highlights Business Architecture Value

Author(s):

Drew Guitarte

Enterprise Business Architect, Wells Fargo & Company

A less known but highly essential artifact of business architecture is the business use case model.

A business use case (hereafter referred to as BUC) model is the higher abstraction of the system use case model (or simply, the UC model). In a BUC, business actors with specific business goals interact with other business actors. The BUC is primarily an external view of the business model or area of interest. A system use case diagram, on the other hand, illustrates the domain from an internal point of view.

Process Excellence Success: More Art than Science

Author(s):

Andrew Spanyi

Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

Process excellence is becoming an umbrella phrase to describe the set of improvement methods such as Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering, and technology driven BPM with the objective of improving operational performance. There has been a great deal of attention dedicated to the science of deploying each of these various improvement methods. Indeed, these methods of improvement have become increasingly codified and even commoditized. Much less attention has been focused on the art of succeeding with process excellence.

Business Architecture and the End of Linear Thinking

Author(s):

Ralph Whittle

Enterprise Business Architect, Independent Consultant

One basic tenet of the Business Architecture (BA) is that it represents the enterprise wide integration of all business processes resulting in the Business Architecture model itself. Perhaps some business and IT professionals place more emphasis on the strategic BPM initiatives, but eventually; all business processes are integrated in the BA. In many cases, the strategic BPM initiatives represent key end-to-end processes or value steams; the building blocks of the enterprise. These building blocks, in a metaphorical sense, are similar to a bill of materials (BOM) fo

Lessons from the Human Brain in Decision Making

Author(s):

Barbara von Halle

Managing Partner & Founder, Knowledge Partners International LLP

I am not a poker player. This is probably wise since my grandfather lost the family farm one night in a poker game. Sadly, as the story goes, he never won it back. This caused me to wonder how he made the decision to bet the farm on a game. Which decision-making mechanisms were at play? Which were flawed? In addition, more likely, which had shut down for the evening?

A Government Flavour to Business Architecture

Author(s):

Susan Brown

Pre-Sales manager, Object Consulting

Most articles written about Business Architecture reflect upon an organisations design within a private sector environment whereby the driving force in deciding the organisations direction is profit and loss. Profitability can more or less be measured by cost of company operations and optimisation of transactional and support activities against revenue generated from customer needs. Other measures such as customer satisfaction, quality, and price of competitor products and services all affect the organisations design, direction, operation and optimisation.

Process Improvement: How to start and the role of the 3-P’s

Author(s):

BPMInstitute.org

Business Relationship Manager - Product Lifecycle Management, Chevron Corporation

So you have been through countless meetings and discussions with your peers, managers, executives, and anyone who would be a tad interested in Business Process Management, and how a BPM platform would not only streamline line-of business processes but also improve the overall efficiency of the organization. You tried every possible way to convince people in your organization that “process” is not just about drawing rectangular blocks on a blackboard, or post-it notes on large paper boards, but about the methodology that encapsulates process improvement and the larger gain that such a methodology could provide to the organization in the long run. You discussed how process improvement and management could provide better ROI, increase efficiency and visibility, and improve collaboration; how a BPM system, model-driven framework and Service Oriented Architecture would increase the rate of deployment of business critical processes.

Regulatory Reforms (DF) and Strategic Remediation Plan

Author(s):

Vinod Jain

VP - Strategist, BNYMellon

Introduction (What and Why)

The recent financial crisis and economic downturn has shown that there is a great need for a properly resilient and robust financial/banking system. This need for stability has prompted the banking industry to undergo drastic changes. Financial firms are adjusting business operations in order to be compliant with increased regulatory demands. Naturally, this adjustment has led to higher operating costs. Falling profits associated with this regulatory squeeze can be ameliorated by strategic adherence to cost cutting methodologies – namely Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and Business Intelligence (BO).

Business Architecture for Everyone

Author(s):

Neal McWhorter

President, Strategic Value Partners

Leveraging Business Architecture for a Business Analysis Practice

Leading Process Change

Author(s):

Andrew Spanyi

Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

Many firms are actually quite good at improving performance on projects of small scope within traditional organizational boundaries and yet they struggle in achieving sustainable improvements to large business processes such as order fulfillment and new product introduction.

What’s the problem? Lack of committed leadership typically surfaces among the top few barriers in practically every survey on the obstacles in making major improvements to organizational performance. Why do leaders continue to struggle in this regard? There are at least three reasons.