Todd Biske: Outside the Box

I’m now in the Beginner’s Guide to Business Architecture session from Philip Allega. So far so good. He’s got a slide up right now showing an Anchor Model which presents a view that aligns nicely with my mental model of a diagram that shows the horizontal and vertical domains of the business. It’s nice to see something more formal than my own thoughts, and is exactly what I’m hoping to learn in this session.

The next components of a business architecture being discussed are principles and business domains. Interestingly, in doing technology architecture, I’ve worked with principles (technology-based, such as open-source vs. closed source, best of breed versus best fit, etc.) and technology domains. There’s really no difference in approach other than we’re now dealing with business principles (he gave the example of “No supplies will gain more than 5% of internal market share”) and business domains.

He’s now discussing roles that may be found in the BP & BA activities. There seems to be a strong correlation between BPI (Business Process Improvement) initiatives and Business Architecture. While he hasn’t come out and said that they are one and the same, it does make sense. If Business Architecture isn’t a once-and-done deal, then it makes sense that BPI is really just the continuous evolution of the Business Architecture.