Some would say it’s kind of an invented thing that gives what we used to call Management Consulting a new coat of paint. It’s focus is the alignment of current and planned business capabilities with IT enterprise planning. Maybe it’s a repackaging of normal ‘structured analysis’ techniques normally done by ‘management consultants’ and now renamed and better connected with Enterprise Architecture. Some say it’s already in TOGAF, but now it’s expanded and given a special identity.

Whatever. Is it useful? Yes, it can be very useful, whether cast as part of the EA program or an independent function living on the “business side” to give it credibility with the business functional units.

But ‘whatever’ isn’t fair if a bunch of large corporations seem to be picking up the Business Architecture banner. And it seems like they are, so we have to take it seriously. It’s perfectly doable, as long as scope and expectations are managed. It might be a good idea to just start with business capability mapping. Get consensus on what that means. Start and a high level. Move fast and get it connected to Enterprise Architecture (who might scoff at it) and make the Business Architecture useful before they get defunded and reassigned. It can be an uphill battle. Executive sponsorship is critical. Once proven, support the practice through a Policy update to establish sponsorship and some Procedure documentation to establish Process/Method. Use a tool. There are plenty of business analysis tools, even a good EA tool should be useful, as long as it can do some kind of capability modeling and connect those to business units, strategy, IT Assets, etc.. I like that Dutch one for this.

Organization

Your Banking division, Manufacturing, Sales, Product Development … each may have their own “Business Architect”. A Business Analyst on performance enhancing drugs. Yes. But he/she/they have to have a tight relationship with the EA team. A seat at the table. So that business needs, translated into something like capability models, can be effectively communicated to the EA people doing the high-level planning – Yes, the Roadmap.

There’s a lot of work to do, once you get this rolling. Start with a small team for proof of concept but be ready to grow. You can train BAs, you don’t have to go to the trouble of searching, finding, hiring. The outsiders will have to be trained, aligned anyway. Somebody invented a ‘Guild’ and a certification program for this. Not needed, but all BAs in the company have to work to a common purpose, method. That’s the other reason Policy and Procedure documents are needed.