Home / Resources
Resources
Discover a Wealth of BPM Knowledge and Expertise at BPMInstitute.org!
How Does Business Architecture Improve Business Outcomes?
Gregg Rock interviews Ed Hunt in November 2021.
GR: How does business architecture improve business outcomes?
EH: That’s another very important question, Gregg. Business architecture doesn’t define strategy, but it is often a key enabler to enhance and extend it.
In addition to closing gaps in the requirements by using models and to improve communication, business architecture practices enhance and enable the strategy by maximizing the investment in technology. Sometimes that’s through establishing common services, understanding that these capabilities can be used and leveraged across the organization, but they also play a critical role in understanding how to apply the new technology in a way that’s specific to the operational complexity of this business, in a way that increases operational efficiency, and in a way that drives customer satisfaction.
What is Most Significant About the Migration to Cloud Computing?
Gregg Rock interviews George Barlow in April 2022.
What will Raise the Profile of the Business Architecture Discipline?
GR: I wondering as practitioners, what do you think that we can do to help raise the profile of the Business Architecture discipline?
SL: Well, success in Business Architecture just like in any other discipline, is to a large extent, a matter of attitude. In my view, business architects need to approach every new client and every new assignment both with optimism and with curiosity. But, also with an understanding and an acceptance of the fact that they will have to provide a good dose of education as to what Business Architecture is, how it relates to IT, how it relates to strategic planning, and so on.
Happier Staff. Better Results.
Do the math. We all spend a significant percentage of our lives at work. And, based on this poster by Charles Schwab and the state of the Government’s finances, we are all going to be working even longer. So as leaders it is our role to make sure that the lives of our staff are valuable and rewarding, if not fun.
People have incredible levels of drive, ability, and enthusiasm (as evidently clear by the videos that pop up in my social media feeds), and we need to harness that.
Thought: Why is happy hour just an hour and happens after work?
There has been a lot of research recently that is showing that (wait for it…) happy employees are more productive. I guess we knew that instinctively, but now studies are putting some data behind the feeling.
Why is Business Architecture Important to IT Delivery?
Gregg Rock interviews Ed Hunt in November 2021.
GR: The question I have for you is, why is business architecture so important to IT delivery?
EH: Well that is obviously an important question. Today’s businesses are a collection of independent, complex operations organized to provide value to the customer. And, each business entity is competing within the larger business ecosystem in order to offer a unique value proposition and then remain relevant to the market.
No longer are we just audit using technology to automate existing process document and automate existing processing, we’re using it to drive transformation. And, as I like to say the transformed organization, by definition, doesn’t exist.
We have to convert from de-scribing to pre-scribing, and that’s the critical role of the business architect.
What do BPM Practitioners Need to Know about Low Code/No Code?
Gregg Rock interviews George Barlow in April 2022.
Do Organizations Understand the Value of Business Architecture?
GR: In your experience, do you find that organizations understand the value of Business Architecture, or is it a bit of a learning curve?
SL: The standard consulting response is that it depends. Some to, and some don’t. From what I’ve seen, organizations that are rich in workflows and in business roles, such as insurers, claims adjusters, lenders, transportation companies, they tend to have a greater appreciation for what Business Architecture can provide. Now, some of them start with a business reference architecture and tailor it to fit their way of doing business, others develop their own business process models usually, but not always, in a top down fashion.
What does the Future Hold for Business Architecture?
GR: What do you think the future holds for Business Architecture and what do we have to do to stay in lockstep with the future needs of the organization and the advances we’re seeing in technology?
SL: In one of my articles published on the Business Architecture Institute’s website, I was making the case that the traditional methods that make up the standard Business Architecture canon, they tend to assume a slow changing, relatively predictable, business environment. A business environment where you don’t have major shocks to the system, major external or internal upheavals, essentially an environment that can wait for the business architect to do the architecting.
What does Business Architecture Mean for You?
GR: What originally attracted you to the Business Architecture discipline, and what does Business Architecture mean for you?
SL: Well Gregg, to me gravitating towards Business Architecture has really been a natural evolution. My career started with an education in computer science, followed by a few years of software development, and from there I quickly realized that analyzing and distilling the customers requirements was a lot more interesting than coding the spec. And then, moreover, understanding the why behind the requirements, and that the needs that drove the requirements was even more interesting. Being able to correlate those needs with the customers business mission, business processes, supporting system, and data architecture while having that bird’s eye view of the whole texture of the organization was extremely compelling.
Look How Far I Have Come: An Agile Journey
Have I grabbed your attention? Yes, ‘Look How Far I Have Come’ is a song title from the renowned Broadway Musical, Hamilton, but it is also a phrase used by many of us to highlight or showcase their careers and their life progression.
An example perhaps is “I am the CIO now, and this did not happen overnight. Look how far I have come.” In IT, this is used in a similar fashion. From legacy systems, even before, to today—it’s human nature. Look how far we have come, and where we have come from. We were once students getting in line at the University’s computer science dept’ to punch cards for a lousy Fortran IV application, which may have been for a homework or for a midterm/final, and now we drag and drop to put together an app or a UI (a GUI) for iOS or Android. A huge progress, a long journey (not that long ago actually), on our path to excellence, right?
Why Process Inefficiency is Expensive…
…Sounds obvious, but it is more expensive than you know
Interestingly enough, the true cost of poor process is not in doing the process badly. Clearly there is some cost there, but often it is the knock-on effect that the poor process has on other areas of the company, the downstream of the problem, which is the real cost multiplier.
However, this is rarely calculated. If you have poorly documented and followed processes, you won’t even be able to identify the potential costs downstream—let alone measure them. (Note: processes must be documented AND followed to be valuable). So, like an iceberg, you only see a small part of the problem at surface level. Assuming an iceberg is a problem is looking at an iceberg from the Titanic’s rather than the penguin’s perspective.
What is Business Architecture?
Gregg Rock interviews Ed Hunt in November 2021.
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.
Decision Modeling for Business Rules Projects
This White Paper, Decision Modeling for Business Rules Projects: How to Build a Decision Model that Drives Successful Business Rules Projects, was contributed courtesy of Decision Management Solutions.
Decision Modeling provides the tools and techniques needed for scoping and managing business rules projects. Decision Management is a proven framework that ties business rules to business objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). By focusing on the decisions that matter to an organization—the ones that affect your business drivers and measures—Decision Management simplifies business rules design and implementation, accelerates adoption of a Business Rules Management System (BRMS), focuses a BRMS where it has the highest impact, ensures business ownership of the business rules, and delivers agility and continuous improvement of the decisions across the company.
Why Decisions Matter
This White Paper, Why Decisions Matter: Ensuring excellence in decision making to drive efficiency and effectiveness, was contributed courtesy of Decision Management Solutions.
Organizational success or failure is determined by the decisions organizations make but they are handicapped by systems that are centered on business processes or functions.
Companies face many challenges in today’s business climate. Companies whose success or failure is determined by the decisions they make are handicapped by systems that are centered on processes or functions. These companies struggle to improve business productivity while managing costs and find it hard to make changes in their systems quickly, despite a pressing need to do so.
This paper will explore:
- Digital Decisioning
- Decision Automation
- The Benefits of Becoming Decision Centric
- Decision Discovery
- & more!
The Value Proposition of Business Architecture
Join Gregg Rock and Steve Beise as they discuss the value proposition of business architecture.
As the demand for business architecture, continues to expand, we find that folks come to this discipline from a number of different areas; project managers, business analysts, solution architects or enterprise architects, line of business managers and directors – all trying to understand what business architecture is and the role that it can play in their organizations.
This webcast will provide you with:
Digital Transformation: Value-Driven, Process-Led, and Data-Based
What makes a digital transformation successful?
Most organizations have started, or have at least planned, their digital transformation journey [0] [1]. These organizations expect to increase their performance drastically by leveraging digital technologies. However, many of those businesses struggle to meet the high expectations through their digitalization initiatives, and don’t deliver the expected value.
90-Days to Go-Live Approach
Have You Heard of “Wa-Agile”?
Post-pandemic, there is a clear trend that technology projects are seeing the highest level of approvals. Everyone is looking to not only grow their technological footprints, but to also achieve it in less time and while on a budget. Agile projects are being planned and executed in every organization, which appears to be the best approach to move forward.
Organizations following a waterfall model for technology project deliveries have tried to go Wa-Agile (Waterfall + Agile); another popular term used for Wa-Agile is “Semi-Agile.” This is a step forward to achieve Agile maturity. In organizations where Agile is being used for delivering projects, they are commonly moving towards a 90-days to Go-live approach as opposed to the traditional long-term 180+days delivery approach.
How to Know if a 90-Days to Go-Live Approach is for You?
The Product Backlog: A Step-by-Step Guide
Editors Note: The BPMInstitute is excited to share this article written by Omer Schechter. This article was originally published on Toptal.com, on June 3, 2020.
Product backlogs are a critical component of product development: Comprised of a prioritized list of features that guides a product from its initial vision to its execution and formal release. By converting high-level concepts into working details, the product backlog facilitates the creation of a product. Let’s take a closer look at the key steps and the core elements of a product backlog and how a product manager is responsible for creating, prioritizing, and maintaining it.
Split the Backlog into Two Lists
When creating a backlog, define its scope, whether it applies to the entire company’s product line, a subset of products, or just a single product—this helps you manage the features.
Disruption, Hyperautomation, and Transformation – Part II
Sooner or later, everyone will have Hyperautomation tools—the only question is, which ones?
Disruption, Hyperautomation, and Transformation – Part I
Some disruption is a normal part of any business operation. We just adjust. We collectively all just lived through a bad one—the Covid19 pandemic. We are now entering yet another new major disruption, and hopefully it will prove to be a good one. While this disruption has already started, its impact has not yet reached its projected level.
