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The Enterprise Architecture domain of business architecture is about more than simply business capabilities and procedures. It’s all about maximizing value for your customers and contributing to the development of a more customer-centric business.
The Importance of Value in Enterprise Architecture
Business processes have traditionally been Enterprise Architects’ primary means of communication with business stakeholders. The concept of business capability, on the other hand, is a relatively contemporary term that is frequently employed in Enterprise Architecture. As shown in this video titled “TOGAF® Business Architecture: Company Capability Guide,” business capabilities enable a clearer knowledge of how software applications assist the business. Some new business capabilities have no accompanying apps, whilst others have an excessive number. Both concepts alone fall short of capturing the value that an agile customer-driven organization must deliver to maintain and grow its market share in the face of increasingly rapid and continuous innovative changes, as well as more informed customers who force them to adopt more fluid business strategies.
In a customer-driven business, enterprise architects must comprehend and apply the idea of value, as demonstrated in Figure 1. A company often offers many value propositions to its various customer groups (or personas) and partners, which are provided via value streams comprised of multiple value phases. Internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and, in many cases, the customer are all involved in the value phases. Customer journey steps are enabled by value stages, which are enabled by capabilities and operationalized by procedures (level 2 or 3 usually). If you wish to learn more, the TOGAF® Business Architecture: Value Stream Guide video gives a very clear and easy explanation. Customer journeys aren’t technically part of business architecture, but they may be highly beneficial when interacting with business stakeholders.
These value streams/stages aren’t going to appear anywhere. A business must be able to accomplish a specified goal, which is to offer value to the triggering stakeholder, which in this case is the customer. This ability serves as a business enabler. The organization will be unable to give value to its stakeholders without this capacity (customers). A business process operationalizes a capacity that allows a value stage. It’s also owned by one or more business units or divisions inside an organization, and it’s utilized by one or more of them. At least one application, system, or IT service is usually required to provide a capacity.
Value propositions, value streams, and value phases are the reasons why a project or effort should be undertaken. A stakeholder is the “Whom” who must participate for value to be created. The business process describes “How” a company might generate value. Finally, business competency is “What” the company must manage or perform to generate value.
Important Definitions
Using the TOGAF Standard definitions as a guide, each element in Figure 1 may be defined as follows:
Business Process. A business process is a collection of connected and organized operations carried out by people or machines in a certain order to generate a service or a product (or serves a business goal or objective).
Business Capability. A business capability is a specialized ability that a company can have or trade to attain a certain goal. Applications, systems, and/or IT services must support a business capability.
Customer. A person who buys a product or service.
Customer Journey. The customer journey encompasses all of the experiences that customers have while interacting with an organization in a series of progressive phases before and after acquiring a product or service. Instead of focusing on a single aspect of a transaction or event, the customer journey will capture the entire customer experience. A customer journey is made up of many stages.
Product. A thing, an idea, a technique, information, an object, or service supplied by an organization is developed as a consequence of a process and serves a need or satisfies a want of a consumer. A product is frequently included in a value proposition.
Stakeholder. A person, group, organization, or class of people who are interested in a system.
Service. A repeated activity is a distinct behavior that may be requested or otherwise activated by a building block. A product is frequently included in a value proposition.
Value Proposition. A value proposition is a promise to provide value to the triggering stakeholder (typically a customer) who believes that at least one benefit will be received as a result of their purchase.
Value Stream. A representation of a customer, stakeholder, or end-total user’s result created by an end-to-end collection of value-adding actions. A value stream is made up of numerous value phases that each include at least one identified stakeholder.
Enterprise Architecture and the 5 Phases of Agile Strategy Execution
Let’s now place each of the pieces in Figure 1 above to choose which of the 5 phases to implement an organizational agile strategy to take, as shown in Figure 2 below. The book “Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution: Design, Architect, Prioritize, and Deliver your Corporate Future Successfully” explains these steps in-depth.
Throughout the five phases of an organization’s agile strategy execution, customers (segments and/or personas) and partners are involved. All phases include business stakeholders, except for the fourth, which is the agile delivery and execution phase. Stakeholders in IT are primarily involved in initiative planning (step 3) as well as agile delivery and execution (step 4).
To satisfy particular strategies and goals, value propositions, goods, and services are generally defined in business design and strategy (step 1). Typically, customer journeys, value streams, and value stages are analyzed at the start of your architecting change (step 2). In both architecting change and planning initiatives, business capabilities are investigated (steps 2 and 3). Business processes are mostly handled in the agile delivery and execution phase (step 4) at the operational and tactical levels, where business process experts and agile experts must fulfill explicit targets while using tactics to measure progress.
Enterprise architects must realize that business architecture is more than simply business capabilities and procedures if they are to add value to their organizations. Enterprise architects should not restrict themselves to architecting their organization’s transformation and initiative planning. Enterprise architects may also help their company’s clients and partners get the most out of their investments. Including all parts of business architecture in your enterprise architecture practice will increase the value of your team to business stakeholders during the initial business design and strategy phase, as well as to IT stakeholders throughout the agile delivery and execution phase.
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