Introduction to Business Architecture: Useful Modeling Techniques and Supporting Tools

In recent years, the audience and attention for business architecture have steadily increased. Business architecture provides a business‑oriented enterprise abstraction within its ecosystem, aiding organizations in decision‑making and direction setting. The maturity of this discipline makes model‑based design, analysis, and decision support increasingly important.

View on Business Architecture

The business architecture discipline has developed its own methods and knowledge base, such as the Business Architecture Guild® and the Open Business Architecture (O‑BA) standard’s Business Architecture Knowledge Framework (BIZBOK® Guide), currently being developed by The Open Group.

We consider business architecture an important domain within the broader scope of enterprise architecture. The latest ArchiMate 3.0 version includes business architecture concepts (e.g., functions, results, and courses of action) for enterprise architecture modeling. Others adopt a more IT‑centric view, treating it as enterprise‑level IT architecture and placing business architecture alongside it as a separate discipline. A third group treats business and enterprise architecture as synonyms.

Regardless of your stance in this debate, the techniques used in this field are valuable additions to the toolbox you can employ when designing and managing an enterprise. This implementation‑independent view provides a crucial link between strategy and execution, connecting high‑level, coarse‑grained descriptions of organizational strategy and business models with the more detailed, technology‑oriented domains of EA such as processes, applications, and infrastructure.

Business Architecture Domains

The typical domains or aspects addressed by business architecture are shown in the diagram below. The centre contains a set of four “core” domains representing relatively stable aspects of the business, plus several less stable aspects. Essentially, all of these can be represented directly or indirectly in Enterprise Studio.

The diagram does not display all the inter‑relationships among these domains. The BIZBOK® Guide links them through blueprints ("cross‑maps") that represent various enterprise aspects. We prefer to establish direct relationships between each instance of an aspect using formal semantics, a capability where ArchiMate can help. To achieve this, a mapping meta‑model between BIZBOK® concepts and ArchiMate concepts is required, which will be discussed in a later blog post.

Business Architecture and Other Domains

The key inputs to business architecture are an organization’s strategy and business model. For example, portfolio management, risk analysis, and capability‑based planning support analysis and decision‑making within business architecture.

Other common design techniques in business architecture include describing its value network and value streams, developing and improving customer journeys, and creating service blueprints.

9 Useful Business Architecture Techniques

Business Strategy Mapping – see previous blogs on business model canvas and strategy modeling.

Capability Mapping – see earlier posts on capability mapping, analysis, and implementation.

Value Mapping – refer to our blogs on modeling value networks and value streams.

Organization Mapping

Information Mapping

Initiative Mapping

Product Mapping

Stakeholder Mapping

Strategy Mapping

In the coming weeks we will demonstrate how to create additional business architecture diagrams and use these models to guide your enterprise. We will also revisit value‑stream modeling ideas in ArchiMate 3.0 and discuss how the language might evolve to provide optimal support.

If you are eager to learn more about BIZBOK® and its practical applications, you can register for our practical Business Architecture course and become a Certified Business Architect®.