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
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
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
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
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
Leveraging Business Architecture for a Business Analysis Practice
Leading Process Change
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.
The 6 C’s of Process Improvement – The Owner’s Manual
What do can you do when process improvement is needed and there is no executive sponsor available?
Thoughts on SOA and the Cloud
The cloud is all the rage this year, so not to be left out, I thought I better write something about it. Once you get past the ‘cheaper, faster, better’ hype, one of the common themes is the apparent synergy between the cloud and SOA. Well duh! The cloud is all about making IT resources available as services, and Service Oriented Architecture is all about creating solutions with service building blocks. In this column Let’s start looking at this with some definitions:
Reinventing “Lean Thinking”
Has Lean delivered its full promise to date? Observing the evolution of the “Lean Thinking” concept in the past 30 years in North America is very interesting. A few years back, the (yet another new) term “LEAN” was coined and brought forth, which I found fit perfectly in describing the main thrust of the philosophy and what the driving methodology was intended to achieve.