Business Architecture

Introduction 

Most organisations have developed through a lot of (relatively) small changes over time. Change becomes more difficult and slow, while the environment requires quick adaptation and change. We see the following happen in many organisations:

• many concurrent changes in different programs and projects must ensure the organisation's ambition;
• projects are stopped before completion or scope and objectives are changed;
• strong competition for scarce resources (people and means) and budget decisions are a tedious chore;
• conflicting interests increasingly lead to a stalemate and delay or frustrate developments;
• alignment with business aspects and supporting services (IT, HR, Facilities, and others) is difficult and with disappointing results;
• customers, staff and other stakeholders are - visibly or invisibly - dissatisfied.

The cause of slow or stagnating change is often sought in resistance to change. New and small-scale approaches are adopted to restore the ability to change. Various 'management hypes' like Digital Transformation, Process Management, Agile and Lean are embraced. Sometimes with succes, but more often the complexity and ambiguity will increase even more with these additions .....

What is actually lacking is a shared and coherent picture of the structure of the organization, which includes all aspects of the organization. How are we going to realize the strategy? How do we create a better customer service and who plays what role? What should be done in the business to make this happen? Methods for Business Architecture (Dutch: Bedrijfsarchitectuur) can improve this so the success rate wille improve.

The articles below give an overview of Business Architecture and our approach in this field.