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I saw this post by John Wu on the myth of business process-centric enterprise definition (via Lucas Rodríguez Cervera), and I find it hard to see how anyone gets away with "defining the enterprise based on business process modeling in EA". Business process modelling has a place in enterprise architecture, but it's just one of many tools/techniques for creating the necessary EA artifacts. For example, if you're a Zachman follower, you'll find business models only in row 2 (business model/owner context), and something that could be described as a business process model really only in columns 2 (function) and 4 (people) of that row: two artifacts out of 30.

Wu proposes defining the enterprise from the aspect of mission (why), function (how), information (what), stakeholders (who), stakeholder location (where) and stakeholder demand (when) rather than the exhausted [sic] enumeration of business process modeling, which really seems just to be advocating an EA approach to defining the enterprise. And if you're an enterprise architect, regardless of the framework that you use, you already know that business process models are just one aspect of that definition.

It's important to understand business processes as part of understanding the enterprise, but I don't agree with Wu's statement that most EA projects use business process modelling as their primary understanding of the business, or that EA is just second-generation BPR.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 02:47 AM in BPA • EnterpriseArchitecture | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

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