Business Architect: A Critical Role in Enterprise Transformation

Abstract

The recent wave of innovations forces organizations to transform. Current business models easily become irrelevant, unresponsive, and unready. However, successful change is difficult. In the literature, failure rates of change efforts of over 70% have been shown. This article addresses the issue of connecting strategy and implementation from an architecture perspective by taking a holistic view on the business through a controlled language, modeling, and implementation. I contend that business architecture practice can contribute substantially to increase the success rate of enterprise transformations through alignment of the need, the approach, and internal context. I also argue that a controlled language is a key asset, since it provides rigor in defining and communicating what the right work/right way is when transforming the enterprise; thus, it resolves one of the big challenges caused by technological developments. By setting direction and communicating business needs with rigor, the business architect profession enables executive leaders to better supervise and monitor transformations.

Keywords:

• business structure
• change management
• enterprise architecture
• strategic planning
• standards

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's personal view. However, I could never have accomplished this without the help of others in shaping these ideas. Special thanks are given for the participants of the special working group of The Open Group, who participated in defining the profession of the business architect during monthly and quarterly meetings between October 2009 and September 2011. Special thanks should be given to Kevin Daley, Mieke Mahakena, Mark von Rosing, and Leonard Fehskens, who were key contributing participants.

Notes

¹This definition has been agreed upon by the members of The Open Group—IBM, HP, Capgemini, SAP, Oracle and Ernst & Young—that are Platinum members (the highest membership level) and represent some 70% of IT services globally. These suppliers have been in different working groups since 2006 to capture the standardized practice of the business architecture profession.

²A structured way to model at more detailed level how the accomplishment of one task depends on the tasks or activity of another.

³