The Business Architecture perspective are the distinct aspects of business analysis when it is practiced in the business architecture environment.
Business architecture shows how the strategic needs of the stakeholders are being fulfilled and supports continuing business transformation efforts.
Business architecture provides architectural definitions and views, called blueprints, which help align the strategic objectives with tactical needs.
The business architecture has certain elements which include the following:
• Scope: business architecture covers the entire enterprise, it is not a
single project, initiative, process, or piece of information.
It provides the big picture of how the different projects, processes, and information fit into the organizational objectives. It also identifies relationships, integration opportunities, redundancies, and inconsistencies.
• Needs Separations: The business architecture splits the business needs into its different functions to better understand its effect on the organization.
It separates what the business does from other functions such as:
- The information that the business uses.
- How the business is conducted.
- Who does the work and where in the enterprise the work is being done.
- When the work is done.
- Why the work is done.
- How well the work is done.
Once these needs are identified, they can be grouped into specific combinations, which can be used to analyze specific business issues.
These combinations include:
A. Scenario driven: the business has to answer many questions to provide information that would be used the create the business architectural blueprint.
Each of these different questions need a different set of blueprints that would contain different sets of information and relationships, with different types of results and measures for success.
B. Knowledge based: the business architecture also needs to collect and catalogue different architectural elements such as the what, how,
who, why, etc. in a knowledge base to help answer the next business question that comes up. This knowledge base is often managed in a formal architectural repository.
There are some factors which are also used in the information architecture perspective and they are:
1. Breadth of Change: depending on the scope of the change, the business architecture may be carried out in the following areas :
• Across the enterprise.
• Across a single line of business within the enterprise.
• Across a single functional division.
The business architecture activities are usually carried out from enterprise point of view, but it may also be performed for within a single business unit in the enterprise.
A comprehensive point of view is needed to manage consistency and integration at the enterprise level. The business architecture can be used to show how the same business capability can be implemented by multiple different processes and organizations using numerous information models.
The organization would use this information to decide if this is the best way to align with strategic objectives.
2 Depth of Change: the business architecture work may be focused on the executive level of the enterprise which is used to support strategic decision making, or on the management level to support the execution of initiatives.
But the business architecture does not usually work at the operational level; instead, it evaluates processes at the value stream level.
3 Value and Solutions Delivered: Business architecture, is used to create models that break down the organization into individual components with specific functions that shows the connections between these components.
The components of business architecture models include the following:
- Capabilities.
- Value.
- Processes.
- Information and data.
- Organization.
- Reporting and management.
- Stakeholders.
- Security strategies.
- Outcomes.
The architectural models are used to show a broad view of the domain that is being analysed. They provide an understanding of the vital parts of the organization, how they fit together, and focus on the critical capabilities.
It also provides a blueprint that management can use to plan and execute strategies from both the information technology and non-information technology perspectives.
Business architecture can be used by organizations in numerous ways, such as :
- Strategic planning.
- Business remodelling.
- Organization redesign.
- Performance measurement
- Streamlining business operations.
- Cost reduction.
4 Delivery Approach: the business architecture is used to develop a planning structure that provides insight into the organization and supports decision makers in identifying any required changes.
This may involve using the business architecture to describe the following states :
- Current state.
- Future state.
- Transition states that are used to transition from the current state to the future state.
Business architects need to have a broad understanding of the organization, including its:
- Environment and industry trends.
- Structure and reporting relationships.
- Value streams.
- Capabilities.
- Processes.
- Information and data stores.
- Connections between all these elements.
There are several factors that make a business architecture successful and they include the following:
- Support of the executive business leadership team.
- Integration with clear and effective governance processes.
- Integration with ongoing initiatives.
- The involvement of key stakeholders.
5 Major Assumptions: To make the business architecture practical for the organization, the business analysts should have the following:
- A broad view of the entire organization.
- Executive support.
- The active involvement of the key stakeholders.
- The organizational strategy .
- The business need to be addressed.