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[ Articles ] [ Methodology ]
Business Architecture Transformation Articles
The articles below discuss various business
architecture topics. The focus of these articles is on
general aspects of business architecture, governance,
business / IT architecture alignment and related topics.
Business Architecture: A New Day Dawns on Business/IT Collaboration
Over the past couple of years, business
teams have been forming in organizations. As this has occurred, new
doors have been opening to business /IT collaborations while changing how
businesses express requirements to IT and while engaging IT at the
appropriate levels.
Business Architecture Tackles Complex, Horizontal
Business Challenges
Senior management wants to get serious about consolidating and managing customer
information. Customer contact and related information is scattered across dozens
of business units, each of which updates and manages this information in unique,
nontransparent ways. Continuing the current piecemeal approach to customer
management, however, creates severe roadblocks to servicing customers more
effectively, streamlining operations and competing with other companies in your
industry. Business architecture allows organizations to more effectively analyze
and implement customer information management and various other complex
horizontal business initiatives.
Collaborative Governance Article
Collaborative governance is defined as an environment in which deliberation and
decision making are disseminated to the individuals who, collectively, are most
knowledgeable and most capable of participating in and enacting a particular
decision. This article discusses why and how collaborative governance serves as
the backbone of business architecture.
Business Architecture Survey Results
In December 2007 through January 2008, the BPM Institute surveyed the Business
Architecture Bulletin list to gain insights into the nature of business
architecture work. The survey�s goal was to identify who is performing business
architecture work, ascertain related goals, determine the nature of the work
being performed and identify service and tool preferences.
Business Architecture 2008: Standards, Frameworks and Governance
Business architecture is poised to make significant inroads this year. While
business architecture emerged as a distinct area of focus in 2006 and matured
during 2007, it is poised for a big year in 2008. A number of factors are
beginning to converge that will make 2008 a turning point for this essential
discipline including a new focus on standards, convergence of frameworks and
solidification of the role of business architecture in enterprise governance.
Defining the Role of the Business Architect
As business architecture initiatives continue to take hold, executives
are seeking to clarify the role of the business architect. It is important to
understand the diversity of roles within core and virtual business architecture
teams. Defining these roles will help ensure the successful deployment of
business architecture initiatives.
The Business Architecture Center of Excellence
As business architecture initiatives
gain traction, organizations are launching efforts to visualize and align
business data, value streams and governance structures with enterprise strategy.
Yet organizations are struggling with how to effectively govern these efforts.
To effectively deploy and govern business architecture initiatives,
organizations should create a Business Architecture Center of Excellence.
Ignoring Enterprise Governance & Paying the Price
Enterprise governance,
a key business architecture discipline, provides a way to visualize and
transform the organizational dynamics that define the essence of the enterprise.
Enterprise governance can pave the way for successful collaboration on a scale
that organizations have yet to even imagine. Ignoring enterprise governance, on
the other hand, can spell real trouble for organizations.
The
Critical Role of Business Architecture
Business architecture is the ongoing practice of visualizing and aligning
organizational governance structures, business data, business processes and
business rules across the extended value chain. While business architecture is
an evolving collection of disciplines, organizations that formalize business
architecture as a vehicle to understand and align core and peripheral business
disciplines can benefit substantially.
Business Architecture: Turning Strategy into Actionable Results
Executives have mandated that the organization deploy new strategies while
getting more productivity from its workforce. This requires business unit
consolidation, alternative market exploration, new product and service
deployment, and a myriad of other actions. These activities, in turn, spawn a
demand for infrastructure upgrades and technology redeployment. Unfortunately,
the gap between strategy and actionable results is growing. Business
architecture provides a way to close this gap and enable cross-functional,
cross-discipline collaboration that is essential to articulating and
implementing strategic business requirements.
The Role of SOA in Business / IT Architecture Alignment
Organizations have two universes in constant flux; business
architectures and IT architectures. Now a third factor has entered the mix
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services oriented architecture (SOA). As organizations seek to align business
and IT architectures, SOA can play a key role in streamlining this process. This
article discusses how SOA helps align business and IT architectures to deliver
more effective, more efficient responses to ongoing business demands
- on a
transitional basis and over the long-term.
Collaborative Business-IT Architecture Realignment
IT architectures are merely a reflection of what business units have been
requesting for decades. As the business changed, so too did the IT environment.
Unfortunately, complex and often redundant data and application architectures
can no longer adapt to increasingly dynamic business requirements. Coupled with
the fact that the business architecture itself may be ill suited to respond to
industry dynamics, it is clear that enterprise architecture realignment must be
a collaborative effort involving key business and IT stakeholders.
Organizational Governance: Key to Business/IT Architecture Alignment
When executives cannot see their way clear to address structural dysfunction
within their organization, then attempts to align business architecture and IT
architecture will see limited success. This does not imply that BPM, SOA and
systems modernization cannot deliver tactical value. It does imply that these
initiatives should be coupled with macro level efforts to recognize and address
structural weaknesses across organizational infrastructures that impede business
architecture and IT architecture alignment.
Enabling Reuse through Business / IT Collaboration
Historically, enterprises have been
organized around hierarchical models that discourage communication and
collaboration. Stovepipe infrastructures do not facilitate reuse and, in fact,
discourage it. If reuse is the goal, collaboration is the means with which to
achieve this goal. This will not happen naturally because organizations are not
organized around collaborative principles. If an enterprise wants to build a
culture where reuse is the norm and not the exception, that enterprise must
create a collaborative infrastructure in which reuse can thrive.
IT
Must Focus on Business Value, Not IT Cost Cutting
A business executive recently told me that IT was too busy focusing on the needs
of IT rather than on the needs of the business community. This user claimed that
IT had various projects in the works to consolidate certain databases, address
hardware cost performance, deploy new packages and pursue a myriad of other
projects that did little to recover bottom line revenue or streamline business
costs.
Essential Characteristics of a Business Process Management Product
The importance of business process management (BPM)
has grown dramatically due to the convergence of several factors. Business
requirements that include enabling functional integration across segregated
business units, extending vertical process management into supply and
distribution chains, streamlining costs and providing companies with e-business
integration capabilities are collectively driving companies to embrace BPM as a
core strategy.
How
IT Can Meet Business-Driven IT Requirements
Few people
would disagree with the premise that the role of IT is to meet the needs of the
business units it serves. Historically, however, the ability of IT to deliver on
priority business requirements has been hampered by organizational impediments,
legacy environments and a lack of supporting business and IT infrastructure.
Business and IT executives must establish a pragmatic roadmap that allows
business unit and IT personnel to streamline efforts to deliver real value to
the bottom line.
Accelerating Application Delivery Cycles through Collaborative Development
External and internal demands have magnified a business's reliance on its information systems, but legacy architectures and
development environments are not synchronized in ways that can support these demands. To address this challenge, organizations
should deploy a collaborative development environment capable of synthesizing business requirements, development tasks and the
integration of e-business systems with legacy architectures. This 7,500-word article discusses ways to meet this challenge.
IT-Business Engagement Starts With
Top Execs
Design, development and testing have become highly iterative activities,
which means that IT and business professionals must work as a team to tackle
tough assignments in highly constrained time frames. This article outlines how
IT can engage business executives to meet this goal.
Collaboration Counts in C-Commerce
Collaborative commerce, or c-commerce, is major focus for many organizations.
C-commerce optimizes supply and distribution channels to make an organization more competitive and more profitable. Collaboration for the common good must
be the prime motivating factor in getting demonstrable value from a c-commerce initiative.
Managing Your 'Ecosystem'
Corporations function within complex, information ecosystems. How they
act within these ecosystems will work to their advantage or their detriment.
This article introduces information ecosystem challenges and opportunities.
Organizational
Metamorphosis: Becoming the Hub
Communication, whether verbal, digital or written on post-its, is the thread
that weaves an organization together and is fundamental to all of our interactions. The right organizational infrastructure enables and facilitates effective and efficient communication. This infrastructure must be flexible and organic because needs are constantly changing, yet reflect clear responsibilities and lines of authority to channel collaborative energy. This article discusses fundamental requirements of such an
infrastructure - the Hub System - and outlines how to can make the transition to this new form of organization.
The
CIO has a New Role for a New Era
This distribution of IT roles and responsibilities - within and outside
the enterprise - has diminished the CIO's ability to impose policies and dictate
results. Yet the CIO must still find ways to enable key business initiatives through the effective and efficient use
of technology. This article outlines how the CIO can lead efforts to reinvent IT
to address these challenges.
IT
Centralization versus Decentralization: The Trend Towards Collaborative
Governance
A recent management trend shows a shift in
IT governance strategies that enables the best attributes of centralization and
decentralization to be applied based on the requirements of a given function or
business unit. IT is moving towards a scenario where centralized IT and
decentralized IT can coexist and flourish under a collaborative governance
structure. This article outlines a strategy for IT organizations that want to
get off the "reorganization yo-yo".
Building an e-Consortium
Governance Structure
With the Internet changing how companies interact at every level,
establishing an e-business consortium, or e-consortium, is a growing priority for numerous industries.
This article discusses scenarios and strategies for building collaborative, electronic organizations.
Incorporating Ethics into Information Governance Structures
Ethics are a key element within your information governance structure. Corporate officers, managers, sales and marketing personnel, software developers and lawyers need to place greater emphasis on software ethics in the light of the fact that ethical breaches can result in legal challenges. This article discusses how to create and institutionalize ethics into your
information governance structure.
How Governance Leads to
e-Success
Growth in e-commerce revenue is fueling demand for new
organizational models. An e-business requires holistic governance structures to rapidly
exploit dynamic market opportunities. This requires looking beyond traditional joint
ventures or spin-offs to create entities that can embody the flexibility, diversity,
openness and dynamics of e-driven paradigms. This article discusses how to organize an
e-business around chaordic governance structures.
Using An ASP Need Not Mean Losing
Control
The rapid growth of the application service provider
(ASP) industry has created challenges and opportunities for organizations trying
to incorporate the ASP into their information management strategy. This article
outlines a potential ASP governance structure that can minimize the risks and
maximize the opportunities for both the ASP and their clients.
Web
Partnering may be a Cure for IPO Strategy
Investors shouldn't drive your e-business strategy,
particularly when it means a company is sacrificing customer value to satisfy
investors. Web partnering alliances should consider launching a member-owned
company to avoid conflicts inherent in the IPO model.
Revolutionizing Supply Chain Management
Through
Holistic Governance Structures
Most organizations exist within a complex labyrinth of vendors, suppliers, customers,
distributors, and business partners. Understanding and leveraging these supply chain
relationships are key success factors in navigating an increasingly interconnected world.
To meet this goal, companies should formalize a supply chain alliance in which cumulative
benefits exceed what an individual company could achieve on its own. This article
discusses basic supply chain challenges and outlines holistic governance structures needed
to address those challenges.
Challenge Your Outsourcing Vendors:
Enhancing the Value of Outsourcing Partnerships
To fully leverage outsourcing partnerships, you may need to reevaluate
the factors that motivated your decision in the first place. Are you offloading
undesirable IT functions? Are executives seeking departmental cost reductions? Perhaps
management wants to refocus on core competencies. Whatever the initial motivation for
outsourcing, avoid pursuing tactical considerations to the exclusion of comprehensive,
long-term opportunities. Define your information strategy, and challenge your outsourcing
vendors to find a way to help get you there.
IT
has a Big Role in a Virtual World
Business units are building e-commerce sites, launching supply-chain
alliances and spinning off e-businesses. In this virtual world, the old-guard IT
department, with its Industrial Age, hierarchical management structure,
resembles a relic of a bygone era. But IT disciplines are still essential to the
successful management of information infrastructures. IT must, therefore,
reinvent and redeploy itself to incorporate these disciplines into a
collaborative, adaptive information management function.
Chaordic Development:
A New Direction for Large-Scale IT Initiatives
Seeking order in a sea of chaos? Chaos in the case of an IT project means being caught
up in the miscommunications, politicking, competing agendas and confusion inherent in
large-scale IT initiatives. Executives must address the underlying weaknesses causing
these failures and this requires leveraging the inherent chaos within these environments.
This article discusses how "chaordic" organizing principles can help large-scale
IT initiatives succeed where they have failed in the past.
Project Team Integration:
Halting a Pattern of Failure
Consider this familiar scenario. A business unit wants a system replaced, but cannot
articulate why or how. IT executives have hired consultants to design a replacement
system, but they are not working with the corporate architecture group. The existing
support team, depleted by attrition, thinks any redesign effort without their input
futile. To top it off, the entire project lacks executive sponsorship. This article
suggests a solution.
The IT Decision-Making Process Needs Revamping
Ill-conceived decisions drain
resources from more constructive pursuits and damage the morale of people
chartered with implementing them. Companies need to address this issue at the
source. The decision-making process must change.
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