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Business and Dynamic Change 

The Arrival of Business Architecture

The chapters in this book are contributed by visionaries who see the need for business leaders to define their organizations to be agile and robust in the face of external changes. The goal is to build something knowing that it will be changed; so that you have no need to go back to the metaphorical drawing board for every market condition change.

In his Foreword, Keith Swenson asks you, "Consider what it means to say that the business will adapt in the face of external changes. The business architecture is not simply a model that specifies how to run the business for now and the next few years. The people making the architecture cannot know the pressures that will be faced. Instead, it must support leaders and executives within the organization to make consistently good decisions on how to adapt their practices. The architecture is not a plan that anticipates all the decisions; instead it embodies a set of core guiding principles that enable decision-making."

Understand that the term “business” used this way is not limited to for-profit enterprises but includes all forms of organizations that have a strategic need to accomplish goals. Pragmatically speaking, business architecture is the conceptual understanding that people have on why particular choices were made in forming the organization in a particular way.

This book will help you understand your options and how to relate them to your own organization.

Who should read this book? This book will stimulate thinking about a more complete approach to business architecture. As such, it is imperative reading for executives, managers, business analysts, and IT professionals that require an understanding of the structural relationships of the components of an enterprise.

The current situation

We are at the point of applying these ideas to architecting organizations as a whole. Many parallel efforts have evolved and are currently in use. As a result, there is a need to make some sense out of the jungle of ideas, concepts and approaches to architecture applied to organizations.

The architecture of an organization can be divided into different aspects that focus on particular needs or purpose, for example:

• Strategic needs or operational needs. 
• Important external content with specific time horizon where change is the issue and dynamics of the organization play a critical role. 

This is much like a normal building architecture that differs if the building is intended to be a house, industrial structure or an office structure. The purpose determines what components, relationships and dynamics are in effect at certain points in time.

The book addresses these issues in two main sections:

Part One – The Big Picture of Architecture

Getting your arms (and your head) around the whole architecture space is not an easy task. These chapters introduce several variations with a lot of commonality on how to look at business architecture. Each of these has been used with success. With over 65 management models today and as many methodologies and analytical approaches, the big picture is really a work in progress. As the ideas are sorted out and worked into viable frameworks for representing an organization the value of business architecture efforts will greatly increase.

Part Two – Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Sometimes you need to get into the gritty details of the architecture work. This section introduces some specific uses and applications of business architecture concepts. Some are enterprise-wide and some are specific to certain aspects of the architecture. In each case there is considerable value in applying the architecture concepts described, supported by the writers’ rationale and drivers behind the efforts.

Who should read this book?

This book will stimulate thinking about a more complete approach to business architecture. As such, it is imperative reading for executives, managers, business analysts, and IT professionals that require an understanding of the structural relationships of the components of an enterprise.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Keith D. Swenson, WfMC Chair and Vice President, Fujitsu America

Introduction and Overview

Frank F. Kowalkowski, Knowledge Consultants, Inc., and Gil Laware, Information By Design, USA

Part One – The Big Picture of Architecture

Business Architecture – Information Necessity

Michael G. Miller, HSBC Global United States

Business Architecture: Setting the Record Straight

William Ulrich, TSG, Inc., USA, Whynde Kuehn, S2E Consulting Inc., USA

Making Sense out of the Architecture Jungle

Frank F. Kowalkowski, Knowledge Consultants, Inc., USA

Converting Decision-to-Action

Gil Laware, Information By Design, USA

Design and Reengineering of Business: An Engineering Approach

Brian K Seitz, Intellectual Arbitrage Group, USA

Building a foundation for business architecture

Martin Klubeck, Michael Langthorne, Donald Padgett

How Business Architecture Enables Agility in a Dynamic Market

Dr Michael Poulin, Clingstone Ltd., UK

Part Two – Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Linking Architectures for Business Results

Jude Chagas Pereira, IYCON

Database Reverse Engineering for Business

Michael Blaha, Modelsoft Consulting Corp

Heat-mapped Value Streams as the Translation from Strategy to Action

J. Bryan Lail, Stephanie Ramsay, Ralph Shaw, Raytheon, U.S.

Applying Architecture to business transformation and decision making: Case Aalto University

Patrik Maltusch, Aalto University, Finland and Virpi Nieminen, QPR Software, Finland

Business Architecture for Process-Oriented Learning in Public Administration

Darius Silingas, No Magic Europe, Lithuania; Barbara Thönssen, FHNW, Switzerland; Alfonso Pierantonio, University of L’Aquila, Italy, Nesat Efendioglu, Robert Woitsch, BOC Asset Management, Austria

Leveraging Architecture Federation to Increase the Value and Use of Architecture

David Rice, EA Frameworks, LLC, USA

BA Practical Data Governance

Michael S. Connor, American Family Insurance, U.S.A.

Part 3: Appendices

Acknowledgements:
The publishers acknowledge with thanks the concepts and guidance for this book provided by Frank Kowalkowski  and Gilbert Laware. Formed under the auspices of WfMC.org, the members of the newly-formed Business Architecture Working Group are also active contributors.