What Is Business Architecture? Definition, Benefits & FAQ

We often hear “Organizations aren’t like physical items. They don’t need the level of specificity of buildings or airplanes or ocean liners, right?”

In two words: why not? We don’t know why people believe this.

We believe that organizations are actually much more complex than any of these physical items. If you are building a rowboat, you probably do not need much architecture. If you are building an ocean liner, you need extensive architecture, and at great detail. If you are building a model airplane, you probably do not need much architecture. If you are building a Boeing 747 that flies over water at night (with us in it!), you need extensive architecture. Compare, too, a log cabin to a one-hundred-story building. Ask the people who completed the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago how much time they spent on architecture and how much they spent on implementation. You might be surprised. But we don’t think you will be surprised at the level of detail in the buildings’ architecture.

If you are building a worldwide organization that has thousands of employees and is undergoing constant change, you need extensive architecture. Architecture is the baseline for managing complexity and change.

Without it, what will you use to address complexity and change, and what are you going to do to avoid unintended consequences (that is, you had no details in your architecture)? Architecture is about planning, analyzing, designing, and enabling solutions.

We wish organizations would stop using the prevalent life cycle: constructing, maintaining, maintaining, maintaining. What is your approach to managing complexity and change if it isn’t BACOE Business Architecture?

We aren’t saying that you have to do everything at once. Business Architecture is a continuous process with a greater understanding of its artifacts over time as the business changes and as more of the business is mechanized or automated. Architecture occurs prior to making a change. Documentation occurs after the change is made. This is the only logical, practical, and cost-effective way to proceed. BACOE Business Architecture's objective is to continually reduce the risk of unintended consequences and inappropriate changes.

A Business Architect, as defined by BACOE, is the senior practitioner who designs, develops, and governs the Business Architecture that connects strategy to execution for a specific business domain. They concentrate deeply on one business area (e.g., a line of business or major function), defining and maintaining the models, and standard components that describe how that part of the business operates and should evolve over time. In contrast to the Enterprise Architect, who integrates multiple domains, the Business Architect focuses on making one domain coherent, aligned to goals, and ready for change.

In practice, the BACOE Business Architect develops and maintains the Business Architecture itself, coordinates Business Architecture activities (often globally as a chief-level role), and plans the roadmap of changes needed to move from the current (as‑is) to the desired (to‑be) state. They define and run the processes for keeping Business Architecture artifacts up to date, reviews projects for compliance with Business Architecture standards, and lead the resolution of cross‑program and cross‑project issues where business models, processes, or information need to be reconciled. They also act as an advisor to senior management on business information integration strategies and continually research and assess different approaches for their impact on the business domain.

Day to day, BACOE positions the Business Architect as the person who bridges business and information systems for their domain: establishing and maintaining relationships with business units and capabilities, understanding drivers and requirements, and ensuring that projects conform to the defined Business Architecture. BACOE-certified Business Architects are expected to be seasoned professionals—with substantial planning and analysis background—who can consistently apply globally accepted standards and guidelines so that business solutions remain aligned with business goals, are adaptable in changing conditions, and reuse assets effectively.

A framework is a structure that organizes a set of related artifacts. The framework shows the relationships of the artifacts of the chosen subject area and brings a totality perspective to otherwise individual ideas.

A framework, therefore, makes the unorganized organized and coherent, and it is fundamental to any profession or discipline (engineering, chemistry, physics, language, music---anything). Framework elements must be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

A framework that is in constant update and versioning is troubling. If it is, it is not (or was not) complete. If we were using Version 4 of the framework and we now have Version 9, what does that say about the work we did with Version 4? Can you imagine the English alphabet starting off with fifteen letters (Version 1), then going to twenty-one (Version 2), and then twenty-six (Version 3), with more proposed versions yet to come? How useful would that be?

Can you imagine the periodic table of chemical elements having multiple versions? Chemistry would be like alchemy. Can you imagine the system of musical notes to be in continuous versioning? (It would really be fun to play in an orchestra.)

A framework is fundamental to BA. The Business Architecture Framework™ meets the criteria for a BA framework.

The BACOE Business Architecture Framework™ is a practitioner‑standard frame of reference that defines how to organize the structures and components of Business Architecture so an organization can describe its future, current, and gap states in a consistent, consumable way.

It classifies architecture using the six fundamental communication questions (What, Where, When, Why, Who, and How) crossed with two core model types (business architecture models and business relationship models), producing a set of coherent “views” and “transformations” that make sense to different stakeholders and move Business Architecture from theory into action and implementation. As such, it has become BACOE’s definitive framework for planning, analyzing, and communicating Business Architecture, capturing all business architecture standards needed to connect strategy to execution and manage change with traceability and rigor.

No. A framework is not a methodology, and a methodology is not a framework.

A framework can possibly accommodate many methodologies, but we have not seen a methodology work across multiple frameworks (at least not in the physical world. We can't see how it could be different in the BA world).

A methodology is a set of practices and procedures applied to a specific branch of knowledge. A methodology contains proven processes to follow in planning, defining, analyzing, designing, building, testing, and implementing the area under consideration.

An outstanding methodology guides, simplifies, and standardizes the process; it can be customized to meet an organization's specific standards and practices. An outstanding methodology is correct, up to date, complete, and concise; it defines deliverables; it has methods, techniques, standards, practices, roles, and responsibilities; it has suggested timings and sequences and dependencies; and it has associated education.

Guidelines are not methodologies either. A guideline might tell you what operations you can do or provide suggestions on deliverables. Methodologies should provide a predefined path or paths.

A methodology should allow you to do something "Monday morning." You shouldn't have to figure out how to take a guideline and turn it into a path. The Business Architecture Center Of Excellence (BACOE) Quick Start Methodology meets the criteria for a BA methodology.

The BACOE Quick Start Business Architecture Methodology is a structured, step‑by‑step, R.E.A.L. (Realistic, Enabling, Actionable, Logical) approach for rapidly designing and implementing Business Architecture that directly aligns planning, investments, and delivery with an organization’s goals and objectives.

It demystifies how to “architect the business” by using human‑consumable, stakeholder‑focused deliverables and outcome‑driven roadmaps, so Business Architecture becomes a practical decision‑making tool for business strategy, IT alignment, risk analysis, and project and program prioritization.

The Quick Start method is repeatable across businesses of any size or type and is designed to quickly establish a usable Business Architecture that reduces misunderstandings between business people, and business and IT while enabling agile, high‑value change.

We are not sure why it’s important to stay within one page, but whatever you’re trying to do, it is not a Business Architecture. If you have ever had the privilege (or frustration) of building a house, you know you get a “scroll” of diagrams (blueprints) for the house. If something as simple as a house needs a scroll of drawings, a Business Architecture will also require at least one.

This analogy suggests another hint: There is no one “picture” in the set of house blueprints that solves all constituents’ or stakeholders’ needs.

Similarly, no single drawing or representation solves all needs for all Business Architecture stakeholders: the complexity is much greater. Different audiences require different criteria.

Our primary criteria for business-facing models are whether they are “human-consumable.” Our primary criteria for technology- and implementation-facing models are whether they are transformable into solutions.

There is no such thing as a Business Architecture (or model, or series of models) that will fit any organization.

You might be able to leverage components from an internal prior effort, but you should review anything like that against your organization's Goals, Processes, and Materials requirements after you develop your models.

You need to define your organization's own DNA first. We don't recommend the practice of using "reference" models or vendor-provided models. If you are considering doing so as a shortcut, please think twice. Using these types of models as a review of your BA models is of only limited value, at best. You have to do the work!

Some government agencies believe that the industrial age is ending and that the information age is gaining momentum, so they want to reskill their people to address what they see as the new economy.

Other government agencies are investing in BA because citizens are increasing demand for government efficiency, integration (including interjurisdictional), accountability, and transparency.