What is Business Architecture?
STA Group explains:
Business Architecture helps businesses to understand the complete impacts of decisions before making them. It offers increased strategy, agility, operational efficiency, and capacity for growth.
The distinct value of Business Architecture is most potent in managing business transformation versus business improvement initiatives. Transformational change reshapes an organisation's people, processes, capabilities, technology, and culture by aligning with a new strategic direction. Business improvement optimises the execution of existing processes, capabilities and value delivery channels, as demonstrated in disciplines such as LEAN, Six Sigma, Business Process Management (BPM), etc.
What benefits do Business Architects provide?
Here are a few of the most common benefits:
Focused and aligned strategy - Business Architecture helps translate strategy into action and focus investment.
Improved decision-making - Business Architecture helps the business to understand the complete impacts of decisions before making them.
Increased operational efficiency and capacity for growth - Business Architecture helps an organisation to rethink how it structures and streamlines business operations for efficiency and scalability.
Agility in business and IT execution - A repository of reusable architecture content and defined processes that translate strategies into execution greatly accelerates an organisation’s ability to identify and implement the necessary changes.
Where does Business Architecture fit within an organisation?
A Business Architect serves to bridge strategy and execution within an organisation. Strategy and operational demands drive changes to Business Architecture; Business Architecture translates these ideas into actionable steps that can be implemented seamlessly across the enterprise. As a result, Business Architecture typically has a direct tie to the enterprise strategy, planning, and software development processes.
Regarding its relevance to IT development, Business Architecture defines the business target state components (process, capability, organisation, etc.) and their relationships. These entities and the corresponding IT Architectures (Application, Data, and Technical Architecture) are inputs to the solution design process.
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