DEVELOPING A BUSINESS
ARCHITECTURE STRATEGY
Sarat Varanasi & Praveen Desai
Defining Biz Architecture Teams
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Business Architecture Background
BA Benefits and the need
BA Framework
Business Architecture/IT alignment
Business Architecture Team formation & Governance
Background & Primary Objectives
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Illustrating how the business works 
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Helps Executives reorganize and clarify capabilities
Identify gaps in the organization and potential areas for new service offerings
Identifying Top end –to – end business processes (quote to cash, Hire to retire etc)
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Pre-requisite for Business Process Management
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Prioritize Process Improvements
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Identify Opportunities for co-operation and breaking silos
High level view of capabilities
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Determine Internal provision vs Outsourcing of capabilities
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Mapping business capabilities to business systems to identify inconsistencies and resolve
gaps
Establishing metrics to measure performance of business
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Potentially help establish compensation and bonus structure
Business Architecture Basics
Simplify
• Deliver Business Value / Continuous Improvement
• Define Guiding Principles (ie. Minimalist Design)
Standardize
• Adopt Existing Standards
• Communicate Methodologies
• Business Change Rigor
Modularize
• Define Once Use Many
• Process-Centric Management
Integrate
• Enable Vision / Strategy
• Know Business End-to-End
• Know Technology Enablers
Source – Darryl Sabo– Developing a Biz Arch Foundation
Benefits of Business Architecutre
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Focus on the value to the organization and customer
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Identify Synergies in Processes
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Eliminate duplications and reduce manual interventions by highlighting steps in process
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Consolidate and standardize operations and technology staff across Business Units
Support other architecture domains
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Analyze Key Value Chains (functions and services yielding economic value)
Reduce risk and improve efficiency in process and technology
Basis for other domains like Technology, Enterprise and application architectures
Enabling Organizational change
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Help identify impact of major process/ system changes and enabling organizational
change
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Measure the impact of current processes and identify opportunities for new
services/offerings
Source – SOA Consortium – Biz Arch: The missing link between EA and Biz strategy
4 Quadrant Framework for Business Architecture
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Effective Process Modeling
Develop Requirements Mapping Maturity
Align Process owners with IT teams
Encourage methodologies for quick and continuous
monitoring of business process activities
Enable & Measure
Enable Organizational Change
Build competitive advantage through IT alignment
and business requirements
Measure Effectiveness of projects through process
impact
Business
Architecture
Efficient Business Processes
Rationalize current systems that business interacts
with
Develop common interface to simplify system
interaction
Develop and evaluate principles for integration
with BI and MDM framework
Innovate & Virtualize
Explore avenues for technological and process
innovation
Explore opportunities to virtualize/outsource
Identify areas for process improvement
Business Architecture and IT
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Business Architecture as IT Input
Business
Architecture
Technology
Enterprise Architecture
Architecture
Source – SOA Consortium – Biz Arch: The missing link between EA and Biz strategy
Team Formation, Tools & Governance
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Team - skills
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Business Generalists and enterprise architects with solid business
understanding
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Business Process owners with analytical and system knowledge
Governance
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Ensure business design changes are updated in the repository frequently
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Ensure cross-functional business and IT teams representation in SC
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Follow CMMI model for building maturity in the processes
Tools
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BPM tools are a good starting point for BA teams
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Development of searchable and easy to understand process artifacts
essential