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Actionable Business Architecture
Interviews from over a thousand CEOs in 2008 shows organizations are bombarded by change, and many are struggling to keep up1. CEOs view increasingly demanding customers not as a threat, but as an opportunity to differentiate. They are moving aggressively toward global business designs with deeply changing capabilities and increased flexibility.
The gap between their capability to manage change and the challenge ahead is growing. CEOs expect fundamental change, but they seem uncertain about their organization’s ability to manage it. Business pressures are compounding as IT constraints are growing.
Changing – A Core Business Competency
With the operational problems caused by the current economy and the uncertainty that possible new legislation is causing, the need to change quickly and effectively is greater than ever. Few companies are prepared or capable of rapid, efficient change – especially broad based change.
Putting Business Information Architecture to Work
In a previous article, we talked about using web semantic technologies such as OWL and SBVR to create conceptual models of a business. In this article, we explore an example of using a Business Information Architecture to solve a business/IT problem. The architecture exercise helped clarify thinking about the possible solution forms and served as a model for the corresponding IT application and data changes.
Can SharePoint 2007 be my Enterprise Business Process Management (BPM) Solution?
SharePoint 2007 provides a basic set of business process management (BPM) functionality. Many IT shops and business users who have SharePoint 2007 running in their environment may be wondering what BPM capabilities SharePoint 2007 does have, and how it stacks up to traditional packages that promote themselves as complete BPM solutions.
Most Enterprise BPM solutions are comprised of the following high level components:
Continuous Improvement with BPM and Enterprise Architecture Together
Today’s global environment requires businesses to work smarter and to improve the coordination between planning and execution to continuously improve business processes and optimize costs. While Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) each have value on their own, they are also naturally synergistic, and together provide better business outcomes and strategic alignment of business and IT.
When done together, BPM provides the business context, understanding and metrics, and EA provides the discipline for translating business vision and strategy into architectural change. Only when supported by appropriate collaboration and governance processes can BPM and EA roles work effectively together towards the common goals of the enterprise.
Six Simple Steps for Accelerating and Perfecting Requirements: A Framework, a New Model, and Visualization
Software engineering is a much younger discipline than are other branches of engineering. We see this in the continuing evolution of attitudes and approaches to requirements. In early days, there were no requirements. In later days, there were volumes of approved textual statements. Eventually, there were formal models. Today, sometimes models and statements are merely interim deliverables because code becomes the requirements.
The Value of Improving and Managing Processes
What is a process?
A process is a combination of steps and activities that creates some output or result. It represents the flow of work and information through an organization. It is the mechanism for creating and delivering value to a customer.
Process and Department
The Role of Business Architecture and Organizational Change Management in Business Transformation
In previous articles I have attempted to make the case for the role of the Business Architect in Organizational Change Management (OCM) and the role of OCM in driving Business Architecture (BA). Clearly this author believes that BA and OCM are tightly coupled. In this article, I present my view on how BA contributes to business transformation through OCM.
The Strategic Promise of SOA to Supply Chain Management
Attaining superior efficiency, high visibility and customer satisfaction across the entire supply/demand chain is essential for all organizations in today’s competitive markets. Supply chain efficiency has profound implications on an enterprise’s ability to meet its customer’s demands, the enterprise’s reputation, and the overall financial success of the enterprise. However, an enterprise’s supply chain also presents the single biggest opportunity for operational inefficiencies in any enterprise.
Business Rules in the Process Age
In a previous article “Integrated Business Management in the Process Age”, I discussed the dawn of the process age which follows on the Information age. In that article I stated that an organisation’s maturity in the Process Age can be plotted against its ability to utilise and manage the five basic capabilities for high performance: People, Guidance, Processes, Information and Resources.
Defining Requirements for a Business Architecture Standard
As enterprises continue to deploy business architecture capabilities, the need for a consistent, cohesive understanding of business architecture is growing increasingly critical. Frameworks, methodologies and tools will continue to evolve, but practices and technologies must be based on a solid foundation. This white paper promotes a common understanding of business architecture. The discussion defines the essence of the business architecture, how it relates to IT architecture, the importance of business architecture standardization, and a roadmap for achieving standardization.
Monitoring SOA End to End
For those organisations that have moved into live running of business applications based on SOA, one of the (many) current headaches is monitoring and managing end to end transactions. Although application, network and infrastructure monitoring tools have been around for many years, the loosely coupled nature of SOA presents some challenges in providing the transaction visibility, integrity and recovery capability that mainframe users have enjoyed since the 1970s.
Business Architecture Community Webcast: Advancing BA in 2010
Join us for this LIVE webcast to share your opinion on our 2010 editorial calendar, find out how to contribute to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge and learn about the new benefits you have through BusinessArchitectureInstitute.org.
This webcast includes:
- Discuss the needs of the business architecture community and establish goals and objectives for the 2010 editorial calendar on BusinessArchitectureInstitute.org
- Gain an understanding of the enhanced capabilities that the Business Architecture Community will receive through our partnership withBusinessArchitectureIn
Join us for this LIVE webcast to share your opinion on our 2010 editorial calendar, find out how to contribute to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge and learn about the new benefits you have through BusinessArchitectureInstitute.org.
This webcast includes:
Business Architecture: The Complete View of Business
In recent years, two business evaluation methodologies have competed for center stage: Business Process Management and Business Rules Management (or, as some are now calling it, “Business Decision Management”). Currently, there is a new methodology, Business Architecture, which is attracting attention.
Why is Business Architecture generating such interest?
The Watermelon Box
“Innovation” does not always mean “new technology”
There’s almost nothing better on a hot summer day, especially at a picnic, than a nice, cold, juicy watermelon. The problem with watermelons, however, is that they are big, oblong objects that usually don’t fit in the fridge and often take up the whole ice chest (occasionally, you can find a smaller, volleyball-shaped melon, but even those take up a bunch of space).
Maturity & Business Architecture
Background “Maturity” is a term that has become more and more prominent in business since the 1980s, when the United States Air Force funded a study at the Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute to create a model for the military to use as an objective evaluation of software subcontractors.
Business Architecture and Portfolio Management
Fiona S., the chief operating officer of an multi-national industrial parts manufacturer, listens to Wayne, the vice-president of sales, present his group’s capital investment proposals for the coming year. Among the planned initiatives Wayne describes is the development of an online sales quoting tool. As Fiona listens to Wayne run through the list of proposed features that the tool will include, a thought occurs to her:
Didn’t the Customer Service group propose a CRM initiative that touched on similar things just last week?
When BPM is Not Done Right
Much of today’s Business Process Management (BPM) consideration and effort tends to focus more on the technology aspect. Truly effective BPM, however, cannot focus entirely on technology.
In this article, we will explore three aspects of BPM that do not get as much attention as they should: the human-side perspective, the need to implement incrementally, and the place of BPM within the larger context of Business Transformation.
Selling Business Architecture Internally – The Value-based Approach
Too often, as business architects, we face internal barriers while driving adoption of business architecture practices within an organization. We are confronted with confused looks, competing priorities, tight budgets, and hearing frequently that “we don’t need another documentation methodology.” All are fair points if the perception of business architecture is truly that it is only a documentation methodology. Business Architecture, however, is much more. It is easy for any business architect to get preoccupied in the daily routine of producing business
Optimizing the Address Change Process
In this article we will examine a fairly common business process, customer address change, to outline a range of alternative approaches to business process management and improvement, from a low-tech, manual “quick fix” to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach.
The Scenario
