Business Architecture

This Book attempts to lay out some useful foundations for modelling Business Architecture.

Business Architecture in this context is seen as a blueprint for the enterprise, that acts as a common reference point for many disciplines involved in improving business performance, either through their involvement with Business-as-Usual (BaU) and/or with Change and Transformation activities (CaT).

The reader is guided through a series of modelling paradigms that reflect a modern approach to documenting a coherent end-to-end Business Architecture. These include:
- Business Model - defining the purpose of the enterprise as a value-creation endeavor.
- Motivation and Governance - setting out the context for the architecture.
- Business Anchor Model - conceptual business architecture - documenting what is required to create value.
- Core Operating Model - essential concepts in a logical business architecture, explaining how value is created.
- Operating Model extensions and realizations - the idea of specialist architecture domain plug-ins and overlays, proceeding from the Core Operating Model.

The approach taken recognizes, in every modelling area, the importance of identifying required activities in the Business Architecture of an enterprise, since it is activities that create value for the stakeholders. The Book goes on to explain the various enterprise structures that must also be described in the architecture, structures to execute activities and for activities to act upon, in the accumulation of value.

Emphasis is placed in the Book on traceability within the architecture, ensuring that all the modelling done by a team 'joins up' successfully. It is important that the architect can move smoothly between different aspects and levels of granularity expressed in the Business Architecture, using suitable repository-based tools. To illustrate this, the Book makes extensive use of the ArchiMate® Enterprise Architecture modelling language, a standard which is administered by The Open Group.