Document Your Business Architecture
Bridge your business goals and your IT solutions.
- You don’t know where or how to begin, or how to engage the right people, model the business, and drive the value of business architecture.
- There is confusion around how to create effective blueprints that accurately model the right parts of the business.
- Alternatively, you have drawn up great models, but are unable to put them into use.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Successful execution of business strategy requires planning that:
- Accurately reflects organizational capabilities.
- Is traceable so all levels can understand how decisions are made.
- Makes efficient use of organizational resources.
In order to accomplish this, the business architect must engage stakeholders, model the business, and drive planning with business architecture.
Impact and Result
Engage your stakeholders.
- Recognize the opportunity for architecture work, analyze the current and target states of your business strategy, and identify and engage the right stakeholders.
Model the business in the form of architectural blueprints.
- Apply business architecture techniques such as strategy maps, value streams, and business capability maps to design usable and accurate blueprints of the business.
Drive business architecture forward to promote real value to the organization.
- Assess your current projects to determine if you are investing in the right capabilities. Conduct business capability assessments to identify opportunities and to prioritize projects.
Document Your Business Architecture Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should practice business architecture, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Engage stakeholders
Identify opportunities for business architecture work, identify project stakeholders, and effectively engage stakeholders.
2. Model and standardize
Analyze business objectives and design the target or transitionary state business architecture blueprints by applying techniques such as strategy mapping, value stream mapping, and business capability mapping.
3. Drive adoption and compliance
Determine the gaps between the baseline and target state descriptions by conducting business capability assessments, identifying options for resolution, and defining roadmap components.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
10.0/10
Overall Impact
$9,000
Average $ Saved
9
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
CIMATRI HoldCo, LLC
Guided Implementation
10/10
$9,000
9
BearingPoint
Guided Implementation
9/10
$9,000
5
Palm Beach State College
Workshop
10/10
$123K
50
Office of Information Services for Oregon Health Authority (OHA) & Department of Human Services (DHS)
Guided Implementation
7/10
N/A
5
Central Arizona Project
Guided Implementation
10/10
$6,197
5
Office of Information Services for Oregon Health Authority (OHA) & Department of Human Services (DHS)
Workshop
7/10
N/A
20
Macro Solutions
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
5
Unified Health Services
Guided Implementation
10/10
$31,405
4
Central Arizona Project
Guided Implementation
9/10
$2,548
2
State of Hawaii
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Hydro-Quebec
Workshop
9/10
$50,000
50
Unified Health Services
Guided Implementation
10/10
$14,643
12
Toronto Community Housing Corporation
Guided Implementation
3/10
N/A
N/A
UCLA
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
Oman LNG L.L.C.
Guided Implementation
10/10
$1,782
2
Oregon Department of Administrative Services
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Onsite Workshop: Document Your Business Architecture
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Opportunity Identification & Stakeholder Analysis
The Purpose
Identify the business architecture (BA) practice’s key stakeholders and come up with a plan to effectively engage them in business architecture endeavors.
Key Benefits Achieved
Effectively engaging with key stakeholders will help ensure that the further efforts of the business architecture practice, namely modelling and assessment, are done accurately.
Activities
Outputs
Introduction to Info-Tech’s business architecture methodology.
Identify the right opportunity for business architecture work.
Identify and conduct stakeholder analysis.
Develop a tailored stakeholder engagement strategy.
- Stakeholder engagement strategy
Module 2: Strategy Map & Value Streams
The Purpose
Develop a connection between business strategy and the activities the organization undertakes to create and capture value.
Key Benefits Achieved
The key benefit of strategy mapping and creating value streams is the uncovering of potential opportunities for improvement in areas that are critical to the organization achieving its goals.
Activities
Outputs
Create a strategy map to connect business goals to value streams and capabilities.
- Strategy map
Identify and define value streams that support specific business goals.
- Value stream definitions and maps
Module 3: Business Capability Modeling
The Purpose
Business capability modelling is done in order to form an accurate perspective of what the organization actually does to facilitate the creation of value.
Key Benefits Achieved
Modelling business capabilities produces a common language that facilitates discussions on how to execute on strategy.
Activities
Outputs
Decompose the organization into its capabilities using business capability maps.
- Level-0 Business Capability Map
Connect value streams to business capabilities.
Identify areas for further assessment.
- Level-1 capabilities for areas of interest
Module 4: Business Capability Assessment
The Purpose
The purpose of conducting a business capability assessment is to build an understanding of how well the organization’s value creation activities are being supported.
Key Benefits Achieved
The key benefit of conducting an assessment is the identification of an area or capability that requires improvement.
Activities
Outputs
Introduction to Info-Tech’s capability assessment framework.
Mapping applications to business capabilities.
Create application capability assessment and heat map.
- Application Capability Assessment & Heat Map
Prioritize business capabilities using Info-Tech’s prioritization framework.
- Prioritized list of business capabilities
Module 5: Portfolio Analysis & Best Practices
The Purpose
- The purpose of conducting a portfolio analysis is to make sure the organization is investing its resources in the right places.
- The purpose of following best practices for business architecture is to maximize the value that BA provides.
Key Benefits Achieved
The benefit of conducting a portfolio analysis is that it serves as a dashboard and communications tool that can be used to check on the status of critical capability improvement projects.
Activities
Outputs
Conduct investment analysis through an initiative portfolio map.
- Initiative Portfolio Map
Review business architecture best practices.
Discuss next steps.
Present workshop final presentation.
- Next steps and roadmap
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 9 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation #1 - Engage
- Call #1 - Introduce Info-Tech’s business architecture methodology.
- Call #2 - Develop a stakeholder engagement strategy.
- Call #3 - Review the stakeholder engagement strategy.
Guided Implementation #2 - Model
- Call #1 - Create a strategy map & define value streams.
- Call #2 - Model business capability maps.
- Call #3 - Map value streams to business capabilities.
Guided Implementation #3 - Drive
- Call #1 - Introduce Info-Tech's capability assessment framework.
- Call #2 - Create and assess application capability map.
- Call #3 - Analyze investments through initiative portfolio maps.
Contributors
- Dr. Pallab Saha, Partner, Chief Enterprise Architect (Government) & Head of Wipro Academy of Enterprise Architecture
- Sanjiv Purba, Partner at KPMG
- Ian Nairn, Business Architect at Enbridge Gas Distribution
- Shahab Khan, Sr. Business Architect at Innovapost Inc.
- Ian Dumanski, Enterprise Business Architect at Canada Border Services Agency
- Zahiruddin Sandeela, Enterprise Architect and Senior Business Analyst (Independent)
