Business Ecology Initiative & Service-Oriented Solution

Wikipedia has a relatively extended article about Business Architecture but the article mentions a role of Business Architect no one time. Somebody can suggest that Business Architecture exists on its own and operates by itself, which is not necessary the right assumption.

The authors of Business Guide define the role of Business Architect as "Business architect is a person that initiates new business ventures or leads business innovation, designs a winning business model, and builds a sustainable balanced business system for a lasting success." To my taste, this is a bit overexciting definition because we cannot guarantee "a lasting success" or "a winning business", which are out of our controls. Also, the stress on 'new' things is optimistic but who has to deal with what we have today and what we do in business tactical movements?

Another accent on the role definition, which I find more balanced, is given by Akshaya Bhatia, Executive Manager (CXO/VP) of FSL: "Business Architect is a person who is well versed with standard business rules and practices; and is competent to transform the high level corporate business strategy into synchronized plus simplified business models after weighing pros and cons in the existing and emerging business opportunities; and develops and presents business cases; and eventually is able to initiate the layout of design of improved, efficient as well as orchestrated business processes."

Both definitions talk about high level business strategies and strategy transformation, about business models and business innovations. Obviously, this role has to situate rather in the higher level of business hierarchy of the organisation and, simultaneously, has to deal with relatively low-level details. That is, when IT claims it has Business Architects in its staff, this heads to the confusion: are those people just senior System Analysts savvy in the business domain?

For example, is this a Business Architect who has to design business services and processes for the project? I would say YES meaning a business project. Business Analyst, especially in Technology, can control only whether the given design meets new tasks and what might be needed to modify to reach the solution for the tasks. I do not think that a Business Analyst may and should design the solution (i.e. make decisions). As in technical architecture, there are different levels of work complexity and responsibilities exist in the Business Architecture. Some Business Architects may concentrate on strategic initiatives while some others - on the tactical business solutions. One very practical area of the Business Architect work is simulation of consequences of all business requirements, global and local. This is especially important and valuable when the organisation has multiple business groups dealing with shared products; a conflict of interests and business requirements is quite typical to such cases.

Business strategy is very specific area of business architectural activities and requires appropriate knowledge of "organizational structuring methods and business administration theory, like theories on assets and resources and theories on structuring economic activity". This means that not every Business Architect may be qualified for such work. Building strategic architecture also requires certain level of authority and access to the corporate information held and guarded inside the top level of corporate management.

Looking at the landscape of Business Architect specialisations, we can recognise a structure similar to Technical architectural structure. It is not a surprise - both of them are architectures and, thus, have to have similar concepts and attributes of organisation and management. Saying this, I suggest that the Business Architects working at the enterprise level have to belong to the Enterprise Architecture team, the Business Architects working at the Line of Business (LOB) or Business Unit (BU) level, have to belong to the appropriate architectural teams. We can anticipate a category of Business Architects working at the level of Business Programmes and Projects as well.

In the light of OMG BEI, I would propose having joined architectural teams at all levels, i.e. teams that include both Business and Technical Architects on each appropriate level of the organisation's structure. For example, the Enterprise Architecture team may be formed by Business and Technical Architects working on the corporate strategic initiatives and core corporate products for the market. In both cases, the Enterprise Architects have to have direction-making authority over the LOB and BU management and, of cause, architectural teams. This leads us to the concept of cross-divisional and cross-functional structure that is responsible for the corporate product development in line with the corporate strategies.

Mentioned structure is also responsible for the balanced and efficient business solutions for tactical business problems in the same line with the corporate strategies. These solutions may include both business and technical components that should be viewed as the solution elements rather than separated business processes that use automated technical applications. It is clear that tactical business solutions may deviate to some degree from the strategic lines. However, it is the Enterprise Architecture and cross-division management who has to be responsible for validating how far tactical activities gone and whether there are related strategic solutions in the plans. It is not a rare situation when Business calls a task tactical to relax quality requirements having no idea what the strategic solutions might be for the problem. This is where Enterprise Architecture has to guard business integrity of the company.

It is a coincidence that I've just got a call from a recruiter offering me an opportunity to work as a Business Architect... in Technology sector of the company. Should I take this job? We'll see...