Business Architecture

Definitions

Business Architecture

the overall architecture for a single business enterprise

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of a Business Architecture are to:

• Fulfill Requirements.
  Provide an overall structure and set of mechanisms that fulfill the mission, goals, and requirements of the business enterprise.
• Drive Designs & Implementations.
  Influence and constrain the designs and associated implementations of business components.
• Improve Communication.
  Improve communication among the endeavor’s stakeholders concerning the the most important, pervasive, top-level, strategic inventions, decisions, and their associated rationales.
• Build Consensus.
  Produce a formally documented consensus amoung the endeavor’s stakeholdlers (e.g., members of the customer, development, and subcontractor organizations) concerning the:
  • Architectural patterns and styles to be reused,
  • Top-level strategic logical and physical structures (i.e., major functions, classes, processes, components, their responsibilities, and their relationships),
  • Most important, pervasive architectural mechanisms, and
  • Associated rationales.
• Estimate Costs.
  Provide input (e.g., number, size, and complexity of business components and mechanisms) for estimating the cost of reengineering the business.
• Enable Scheduling.
  Provide a basis (e.g., components, mechanisms) for estimating the schedule for reengineering the business in terms of development or life-cycle cycle’s phases, builds, and milestones.
• Influence Staffing and Organization.
  Strongly influence the organization structure of the business in terms of its necessary business component organizations, teams and associated roles. It also influences the endeavor training plan.

Contents

The typical contents of a Business Architecture are the business:

• Architectural style and patterns.
• Logical architecture in terms of its major business classes, processes, and functions.
• Physical architecture in terms of its major blackbox components (e.g., applications, facilities, business units), their responsibilities, and the relationships between them.
• Major architectural mechanisms.
• Major technology and associated vendor selections.

These contents can be in the form of:

• Architectural Diagrams.
• Architectural Models:
  • Data Model.
  • Business Object Model.
  • Business Process Model.
• Software Architecture Prototype.
• Text.

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of a Business Architecture are:

• Producers:
  • Business Strategy Team
• Evaluators:
  • Strategy Evaluation Team
  • Customer Organization, which evaluates the architecture for feasibility and appropriateness
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
  • Project Manager
  • Customer Representative
• Maintainers:
  • Business Strategy Team
• Users:
  • Metrics Team, which uses the components in the architectures as an input when estimating the size and scope of the business reengineering project.
  • Project Management Team, which uses the architectures as an input when managing project scope and schedule project activities.

Phases

A business architecture is typically produced during the following phases:

• Business Strategy: Completed
• Business Optimization: Maintained
• Initiation: Not Applicable
• Construction: Not Applicable
• Delivery: Not Applicable
• Usage: Not Applicable
• Retirement: Not Applicable

Preconditions

A business architecture typically can be started if the following preconditions hold:

• The business strategy phase is started.
• The business strategy team has been staffed and trained in architecting a business enterprise.

Inputs

The typical inputs to a business architecture include:

• Work Products:
  • A relatively complete version of the business vision statement) is available.
  • Domain Model Document for the logical architecture and database architecture.
• Stakeholders:
  • TBD

Guidelines

• See the general guidelines for architectures.

Conventions

A business architecture is typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Work Flow
• Content and Format Standard
• Inspection Checklist

Examples

• The architecture of an entire business enterprise.
• The architecture of a single business unit.