Value Streams: Business Architecture’s Guidepost to Business-IT Transformation
with Neal McWhorter

In the midst of seemingly endless debates about the various approaches and techniques for business improvement, the concept of value is often lost. While we all intuitively know what value means, the use of value driven approaches remains woefully problematic. In this article we discuss the powerful concept of the value stream as a means of defining and delivering stakeholder value. Click here to request complete article.

Defining the Business Capability – A Cheat Sheet

A business capability defines “what” a business does at its core. This differs from “how” things are done or where they are done. Business capabilities are the core of the business architecture. Before I go further, let me say that this is not an article on the importance of the business capability or capability mapping. If you have doubts about this, read some of the other posted articles or white papers on the topic to build your familiarity. This article is for those of you who already understand the value of business capability mapping and need to go to the next stage.  Click here to request complete article.

Capabilities & Value Streams: Business Architecture's Essential Alliance

There is good news on the business architecture front. The level of discourse has elevated dramatically around how to effectively represent the business architecture. At the forefront of this discussion are two essential focal points: the business capability and the value stream. While certain camps have rallied around one or the other, transformative business architecture can only be achieved by incorporating both concepts into those efforts. A quick primer on business capability and the value stream puts our discussion into perspective. Click here to request complete article

The Role of Collaborative Governance in Business Architecture

Collaborative governance as an endeavor in which deliberation and decision making are disseminated to the individuals who, collectively, are most knowledgeable and most capable of participating in and enacting a particular decision. When applied to business architecture, collaborative governance opens up an entirely new world in organizational visualization, governance analysis and business / IT collaboration and engagement. This article provides a strong foundation as to the role and value of collaborative governance in business architecture. Click here to request complete article

Business Architecture: Status Quo or Game Changer?

We frequently debate the question of who owns business architecture, but this question hides a more fundamental issue that can dramatically impact the value proposition of business architecture. Motivation and intent will ultimately determine if business architecture is a “game changer” or just another management discipline delivering incremental improvements to the status quo. Click here to request complete article

What's Up with Business Architecture Vendors?

This article addresses the visibility of vendors in the business architecture marketplace, the challenges associated with repository customization, visualization issues, and how vendors can do some simple things to make their tools more useful to business architecture teams. Click here to request complete article

Business Architecture Belongs In the Business

In many organizations, the inability or unwillingness for business architecture function has stymied deployment and severely limited the effectiveness of business architecture. Accountability for the business architecture function belongs with the business. Click here to request complete article

The Business Architecture Ecosystem & Metamodel

Business architecture ties together a diverse ecosystem that represents your enterprise from a wide variety of perspectives. This article discusses this ecosystem, the importance of defining it in a way that is well articulated and easily understood, and the concept of the metamodel as a vehicle for creating a living knowledge base of your business. Click here to request complete article

The Essence of Business Architecture

There continues to be confusion over the practice of business architecture and the role of the business architect. One way to clear this up is to examine other forms of architecture and the related role of the architect. First, we should restate the industry definition. Business architecture is like a blueprint of the organization The concept of a blueprint that promotes common understanding implies that business architecture allows business professionals to visualize the business from a variety of perspectives. This is the essence of business architecture. Click here to request complete article

The Business Architect Must See the Forest for the Trees

What skills should such a business architect have? What attributes describe the business architect? The most important attribute to look for in a business architect is the ability to see the “forest for the trees”.   Click here to request complete article

An Executive Guide to Information Systems Modernization: Lessons from the Trenches

The recently published Information Systems Transformation: Architecture-Driven Modernization Case Studies, which I wrote with Philip H. Newcomb, documents real-world software modernization case studies along with supporting chapters about when, why, and how to apply modernization disciplines. For those who have not read the book or whose responsibilities do not involve IT architecture stewardship, I have extracted 15 principles you can use for planning, approving, and funding initiatives involving existing information systems. These principles offer simple guidelines about when and how to apply modernization disciplines. Click here to request complete article

Architecture-Driven Modernization: Transforming the Enterprise

Systems modernization has been providing benefits to organizations seeking to analyze software architectures in support of tactical systems initiatives such as software maintenance. Modernization has also benefited project teams seeking to migrate obsolete or aging languages and platforms to modern environments. Modernization efforts are now reaching into more significant and far reaching domains, extending opportunities into the upper echelons of IT and business architectures. This white paper discusses how modernization can impact business and IT architectures in very positive and significant ways. Click here to request complete article

Systems Modernization: The Assessment Process

Systems modernization is a collection of tool-enabled disciplines that facilitates the understanding, improvement, migration, reuse and/or transformation of existing software systems. This is the first in a 3-part series of white papers that discusses the assessment phase of a modernization initiative. Click here to request complete article

Systems Modernization: The Remediation Process

Systems modernization is a collection of tool-enabled disciplines that facilitates the understanding, improvement, migration, reuse and/or transformation of existing software systems. This is the second in a 3-part series of white papers that discusses the remediation options that may be applied to a variety of IT project initiatives. Click here to request complete article

Systems Modernization: The Transformation Process

Systems modernization is a collection of tool-enabled disciplines that facilitates the understanding, improvement, migration, reuse and/or transformation of existing software systems. This is the third in a 3-part series of white papers that discusses the modernization options that may be applied to a variety of IT project initiatives.   Click here to request complete article

The Business Case for Legacy Architecture Transformation

Legacy architecture transformation describes the process of modifying the form, design, and /or function of one or more legacy applications and /or data structures. A legacy architecture transformation strategy defines a commonly agreed upon philosophy that an enterprise can use to reconcile legacy architecture limitations with high-priority, time-critical business requirements.  Click here to request complete article

Extracting Business Rules from Existing Systems

Retooling entrenched business processes requires retooling one's information systems. This may involve replacing systems or, in other cases, significantly reworking those systems. In either case, knowledge of the underlying rules that govern those systems is essential to understanding how the business works as well as how replacement systems can better support your business.   Click here to request complete article

             Business Architecture  Articles

Modernization Articles

The Business Capability Map: The "Rosetta Stone" of Business/IT Alignment

by William M. Ulrich, Michael Rosen

Business architecture, in general, and capability mapping, in particular, have injected clarity into the complex business/IT transformation puzzle. The business capability provides the link between two complex, yet disparate, environments: business architecture and IT architecture. This Executive Report by William Ulrich and Michael Rosen discusses how capability mapping enables business analysis and business/IT architecture alignment. Among the topics discussed are capability mapping, IT architecture transformation, the use of capabilities to specify service-oriented architecture (SOA), and the transformation of core IT architectures. Click here to request complete article.

New article on Business Capability Principles from

William Ulrich and Michael Rosen.

See our NEWS page for here for the complete article

A Business Architecture Body of Knowledge

For a number of years business architecture was considered an art form, the domain of a handful of practitioners and consultants. Debates raged across standards groups and discussion boards over the use of capabilities versus value streams, the role of processes, governance and ownership, and where business architecture ended and IT architecture began. Endless discussion threads pitted one individual’s view against another, often ending in stalemate. Discussions volleyed back and forth for years, but never produced substantive content that would allow business architecture to progress from art to science. While pockets of resistance remain, the industry is now rallying around a common set of highly aligned disciplines for deploying and using business architecture.

Business architecture alignment evolved organically. As demand for business architecture grew in recent years, practitioners began to rally around a common set of approaches, including capability mapping and value mapping. While these disciplines are basic aspects of business architecture, capabilities maps and value maps do not tell the entire story. Organization and information mapping round out the picture to form a core set business architecture of blueprints. These disciplines are further augmented by strategy, initiative, product and service, customer, partner and related mappings that collectively form a complete view of the given business. While these different views of a business made sense to many people, the industry lacked a shared body of knowledge that could serve as the foundation for understanding and applying these disciplines in practice.

As the practice of business architecture, including alignment of capability and value mapping coalesced, a natural progression saw individuals rally around a common framework and body of knowledge. Click here to request complete article