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Business Architecture Body of Knowledge Bizbok Guide

A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge (BIZBOK® Guide)

Basic business architecture concepts and the ability to visualize this information in a variety of ways is only part of the business architecture story. Organizing this information in useful ways and being able to relate and combine these concepts requires a foundational framework.

The framework concept does not impose prescriptive or restrictive concepts into the practice of business architecture. Rather, the framework provides a foundation that organizations can build upon and customize based on unique business architecture requirements, driven by real world challenges.

The Business Architecture Framewo rk

There are three important components within the business architecture framework:

  1. Business Blueprints
  2. Business Architecture Scenarios
  3. The Business Architecture Knowledgebase

Business Blueprints

Business blueprints deliver business transparency that enables and streamlines business transformation across business units, capabilities, and stakeholders. The degree of transparency delivered by these blueprints rarely exists in many organizations today. As a result, many planning sessions miss essential understanding of how to maximize solution-related investments while ensuring that one business unit's success does not create problems for the enterprise as a whole. For example, consider the company that was creating multiple, competing enrolment solutions for the same customer base across multiple product lines. Each project could have succeeded in principle, yet created more complexity and dissatisfaction across the customer base. Business architecture provides the transparency to discover these issues in advance, before money and good will are squandered. Essential business architecture blueprint building and usage are discussed in detail in part 2 of the BIZBOK® Guide.

Business Architecture Scenarios

The framework also incorporates the concept of business architecture scenarios, which provide business transparency on specific business initiatives. Business architecture is applied differently based on the type of scenario at hand. For example, a business team involved in a merger and acquisition would require different information than another team considering how to stem customer attrition. Applying business architecture through various business scenarios, thereby leveraging blueprint views derived from the business architecture knowledgebase, enables business teams to create and deploy a wide variety of transformation roadmaps. Because this approach is based on a common view of the business across business units, it enables improved executive sponsorship and more sustainable funding structures. Scenario topics covered in the BIZBOK® Guide include:

  • Investment Analysis
  • Shift to Customer Centric Business Model
  • Merger & Acquisition Analysis
  • New Product/Service Rollout
  • Globalization
  • Business Capability Outsourcing
  • Supply Chain Streamlining
  • Divestiture
  • Regulatory Compliance
  • Change Management
  • Operational Cost Reduction
  • Joint Venture Deployment

These business architecture scenarios define the collective set of initiatives, programs, and projects that leverage business architecture. One important aspect of every scenario is that of a suggested roadmap for that particular scenario. Business architecture scenario approaches are discussed in detail in part 4 of the BIZBOK® Guide.

The Business Architecture Knowledgebase

The business architecture knowledgebase is used to store the information about the building blocks, or domains, of the business organized in concise ways that are customized to a given organisation's environment. For example, corporations have divisions and departments while governments may use different terminology. How the knowledgebase is organized dictates, in part, how businesses can be viewed. There are generic approaches to knowledgebase structure as well as organization specific approaches. For example, a government agency would have unique organizational structures in comparison to a hospital or shipping company. Knowledgebase management is discussed in part 5 of the BIZBOK® Guide and is also incorporated into various blueprint discussions.

Business Architecture Knowledgebase Building Blocks, or Domains.

Practitioner Insight and Top Tips

At each meeting of the UK Business Architecture Community a key theme of the BIZBOK® Framework is discussed among Business Architecture practitioners to identify and share current best practice.

Here are some of the key take-aways so far:

Capability Mapping

Key insights

  • Useful tool for gaining exec sponsorship, engagement and buy-in
  • Enables a focus on the 'right things' e.g. facilitates optimal prioritisation
  • Breaks down organisational silos
  • It's right when it doesn't provoke discussion
  • Provides different pictures to meet different stakeholder perspectives e.g. CEO, CIO, CMO, Etc.
  • Provides an overview of a business or function on a page
  • Capability maturity modelling provides real value

Top tips

  • Get the language right for the business broadly and stakeholder groups specifically
  • Use value streams rather than functional breakdowns
  • Get your 'levelling right' exploding to the appropriate level of detail to meet a particular stakeholder need
  • Use of BIZBOK® is helpful
  • Have a set of key outcomes
  • Don't use organisation structure to group capabilities
  • Test the model with key stakeholder groups
  • Defining capabilities is key to aligning understanding of 'what' the organisation does
  • Get executive sponsorship
  • Align to organisation architecture standards
  • Go down to an appropriate level that provides clarity
  • Assess all change against the target state
  • Use as a mechanism to get control of all change
  • Avoid modelling around structure
  • If it's not working, rip it up

Value Streams

Key Insights

Value chain vs value stream

  • Value chain and value stream concepts often interchangeable
  • Value chains tend to be seen when focusing on the whole organisation or at a strategy level
  • Value streams tend to be used when focusing on the customer, so often at a slightly lower level of detail than value chain

Value stream vs process

  • Value streams often similar to the top of the process hierarchy (level 0 / 1)
  • Processes can span multiple value streams
Value stream vs capability
  • Can help identify where the capability issues really are by looking at the flow
  • The value is in linking value streams to capabilities and other elements (e.g. information)

Top Tips

  • What is important is focusing on what we're trying to achieve and who we are talking to, rather than the distinctions
  • It's important to adapt our language to that of our stakeholders
  • A useful way of trying to disrupt – 'why are we doing it this way?'
  • Keep it simple, but not too simple
  • Using common Business architecture approaches and models helps organisations if individual Business Architects leave.

Some content based on 'A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge® (BIZBOK® Guide) Version 4.6'. Copyright ©2015 Business Architecture Guild

For more details on the BIZBOK® framework please see the Guild website. Click

Business Architecture Body of Knowledge Bizbok Guide

Source: https://sites.google.com/site/ukbusinessarchitecture/about/bizbok