What is Business Architecture?

Author(s)

Gregg Rock

Editor & Founder, BPMInstitute.org, BAInstitute.org and DBIZInstitute.org

With over 25 years experience building and creating professional communities, Gregg Rock is recognized as an industry leader in professional training and education vital to helping enterprise organizations support their transformation initiatives. His work has been recognized in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Financial Times, CIO Magazine, and New York Times. Throughout his career Gregg has developed communities, hosted executive networking forums and the formation of advisory boards on topics ranging from IT security and outsourcing to multimedia and Y2K, but is most widely associated with his accomplishments in the areas of Business Process Management (BPM), Digital Business (DBiz), Business Architecture (BA), and Cloud Computing. BPM in particular is a widely accepted approach for designing enterprise organizational and information systems. This focus on process-related skills is creating demand for BPM content, collaboration, and training resources by corporations—a niche Gregg has spent years to fill. In 1997, Gregg founded BrainStorm Group and the network of BrainStorm Communities, consisting of discipline-specific web portals for BPM, BA, and SOA practitioners to network and receive education, professional training online and through live in-person events. This has enabled over 100,000 practitioners from over 125 countries to collaborate and share best practices, online and face-to-face. BrainStorm Communities feature a comprehensive suite of member services including newsletters, discussion groups, blogs, virtual and live events, live and online training, certificate programs, and professional certification. During his tenure, Gregg has produced more than 100 industry events in North America, South America, EMEA, and Australia attended by over 300,000 professionals. He led the development of the Certified Business Process Management Professional program. Harnessing the collective intelligence of leading BPM subject matter experts, this certification establishes an objective evaluation of a BPM professional’s knowledge, skill, and ability. He recently led the launch of BrainStorm's newest Community, focused on Digital Business and Transformation - DBizInstitute.org. Gregg also earned his private pilot license in 1991 and remains an active member of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). When not flying, he’s active in his community and enjoys coaching little league, soccer, and lacrosse for his children.

Edward Hunt

Faculty Member, BAInstitute.org and President, Hunt Consulting Group, LLC

Faculty Member, BAInstitute.org, Certified Business Architecture Institute Professional (CBAIP) and Managing Director, Hunt Consulting Group. Providing business architecture consulting and training services empowering organizations to design and deliver tomorrow's businesses today!

Gregg Rock interviews Ed Hunt.

GR: Ed, how would you explain business architecture to somebody that’s just coming, brand new, to the space?

EH: That’s a great question. The BA Institute defines business architecture in a very important way: It’s a holistic view of the enterprise, it’s not just the one part, but the whole thing. And that view integrates and aligns capabilities and the BA Institute’s defines capabilities as people, process, tools, and information.

What’s important about business architecture is that it uses models and blueprints of the business to facilitate decision making and help an organization take their strategy from vision, all the way through to execution.

Business architecture also enables the key stakeholders across the organization, at all levels, to align the purpose, mission, vision, strategy, and execution and the models are the tools that make that happen.

GR: I think a lot of organizations these days are certainly trying to move faster and quicker to respond to market conditions and I think all the things that you’ve laid out there are certainly things that would help organizations to do that. So, thank you for giving everybody that baseline definition.

Editors Note:

Watch the entire Need to Know: Business Architecture video series.

Read the other articles in the series here:

Article 2: Why is Business Architecture Important to IT Delivery?

Article 3: How Does Business Architecture Improve Business Outcomes?

Article 4: What is the Connection Between Business Architecture and Digital Transformation?

Article 5: How Does Business Architecture Enable Execution?

Article 6: How Does Business Architecture Assist Organizations from Strategy to Execution?

Want to be featured in the next Need to Know series to share your expertise? Get in touch- we’d love to hear from you.

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