Defining Business Architecture is the key to optimized Technology Architecture
In the current scenario, business elements have taken a backseat while technology elements are in the limelight. This lopsided approach is prevalent in the industry. The point of discussion is the need for intensely deliberated and well-designed business architecture. It is not just the technology that will turn around the business performance but the business performance that will enhance how technology supports business. There are three dimensions to defining architecture at business level; first, of course business, second, people or the work force enhancement, and third technology as the building blocks for an enterprise.
It is often tempting in projects where deadlines are fast approaching, to jump directly into technology architecture hoping that everything else falls in place along with it. Pragmatically, enterprises projects start out this way but to focus on the bigger picture the two more important aspects i.e. people and business processes are often overlooked.
Business architecture provides the framework of an enterprise in terms of its business services, business capabilities or processes and its governance structure. Two important questions that need to be answered are "what" and "how" from a business capability or business processes viewpoint. "What" can be answered in terms of the organization's business processes and "How" is defined in terms of how the organization's processes are executed.
Business modeling should consist of five distinct "dimensions" that can identify the elements of the business process which can be identified as: What, Who, Where, When and Which. The next step is the Gap Analysis to analyze the current (baseline) and target (future) business architectures.
Let's focus on the second building block i.e. People. The key is to develop a workforce who can view the enterprise holistically, continuously refine their skill sets and implement industry best practices. Then, we tackle the technology aspects to implement the identified and defined business processes, convert the description of these processes into services using tools. The rationale behind this conversion into services is to structure the system description to make it compatible with the org-wide standards. Thus, defining the processes and implementing the technology are initial steps to enterprise architecture. The next steps are equally crucial which involve defining metrics which can quantitatively substantiate the promised improvements in business processes.
These metrics are identified with the following goals in mind:
- Results-based planning and management
- Increased use of information technology
- Increased sharing of data for benchmarking.
Therefore, enterprise architecture must holistically look along the key dimensions of Processes, People and Technology to achieve the stated business goals in an incrementally measurable manner.
