Context

This course is the level-3 course and a natural evolution from the other BPM courses offered by BPTrends Associates.

• It adds tools and techniques that add more functionality to managing and improving process performance.
• It connects the process methods at the process and enterprise levels to the required approaches for enhancing the related enablers needed for the process to be at its best.
• It enhances the process view with enterprise-wide information, business capability, external stakeholder and strategic performance design to produce a comprehensive set of requirements to ensure that strategic intentions are realized.
• It provides the ability to measure, manage and govern process centric end-to-end changes as a complete set of interrelated areas that must work together.

Overview

The need for business architecture competency is growing beyond the traditional interest of IT practitioners to include communities of professionals and managers with a broad set of concerns, critical to executing the business’ strategy. Nowadays, many more people need to know how to influence and lead business performance enhancement, transformation and improvement of customer experience to name just a few. The challenges of fast change, crushing external realities, outdated business operations are relentless and old ways of planning, prioritizing, designing and delivering value may be no longer relevant. That’s where Business Architecture comes in.

Responsive and effective business change means that those conducting Business Architecture work must incorporate a number of perspectives of the business and also be confident about the interconnections among them. For the business model to be relevant and agile, we must be able to deliberately design with integrity to avoid unintended consequences. To be clear, this is about more than ‘Agile’ software development, which by itself, will not make the business more flexible. There is immense complexity in issues beyond software. A solid business architecture will avoid redundancy, maximize the sharing of capabilities, and make best use of scarce resources. With a sound architectural foundation, business-wide transformation, digitalization, AI, and continuous optimization can be accomplished and change efforts can progress smoothly with few surprises.

A major architectural requirement is to be able to adapt the business operating model quickly and easily. Business Architects must capture and provide access to the relevant business knowledge to be able to confidently re-configure how work gets done so that value gets created for our external stakeholders. Clarity on business strategy, business capabilities, end to end value streams and business processes, information, technology, and human competencies is essential to avoid unnecessary risks and surprises in the change itself.

Based on decades of experience, this insightful class will delve into the practical aspects of Business Architecture, leaving the participant with the ability required to make Business Architecture disciplined, repeatable and yet practical.

Learning Objectives

• Understand what a straightforward and useful Business Architecture looks like.
• Learn how to implement the key concepts and practices of the BIZBOK.
• Understand how the business delivers value for its customers and other stakeholders (Business Model).
• Define how the business can be cross-functionally organized and still process centered (Operating Model).
• Align what priority investments in processes and capabilities the business should make (Pain-Gain Model).
• Learn to build information, capability and process architecture models and interconnect them through a balanced business performance scorecard.
• Be able to use the architecture to accelerate change projects and deliver on the promise of digital technologies.

Special Features of this Class

• This is a pragmatic working class with a case study and team workshops to practice the techniques.
• Be able to socialize architectural concepts upward and reduce internal resistance to change.
• Learn a method that scales from small to large organizations.
• Consistent with BIZBOK principles and experience–based Business Architecture Best Practices.
• Work with Roger Burlton; the most experienced pragmatist in this field.

Audience

This class will be of benefit to professionals and managers of all types involved with planning and designing organizational change and building business capability to adapt and innovate continuously.

• Business Architects
• Business Analysts
• Strategic Planners
• Process Professionals
• Enterprise Architects
• Business Managers
• Change Agents
• Anyone preparing for Business Architecture certification

Teams attending together will have the opportunity to work together during the working sessions.

Class Outline

Day (1)

Ch1: Why Business Architecture?

• Transformation, Disruption and need for Innovation and Business Agility
• Reference Frameworks: APQC, Zachman, TOGAF, BIZBOK
• The Process Renewal Group’s Business Architecture Landscape and BPTrends model
• In-class discussion: What is your Architecture maturity and readiness?

Ch2: Architecture Scoping and Value Chain Identification

• Whole company or one Value Chain?
• Intercompany Value Chains?
• Case study Workshop: What Value Chains do you have and what’s in scope for Business Architecture?

Day (2)

Ch3: Business Strategy Understanding

• External Business Ecosystem Analysis: Uncertainties, Scenarios, Opportunities and Threats
• Stakeholder Context Model: External product, service and information exchanges
• Stakeholder Value Proposition: Expectations and Experience Assessment, KPIs and Objectives
• Business Motivation Model: Ends before Means
• Case study Workshop: Who are your stakeholders and what is of value to them?

Ch4: Framing the Strategy for Business Architecture Consumption

• Building your ‘North Star’: Goals and Objectives
• Establishing Strategic Capabilities and Requirements
• Choosing your Architecture scenario and plan of attack
• Case study Workshop: What are the Goals and Requirements for the Business Architecture?

Day (3)

Ch5: Business Object/Concept Modeling: The Basis for Information, Capability and Process Architecture Models

• Business Objects
• Concept Model: Verbs and Nouns
• Business Vocabulary / Semantics
• Deriving the Information Model
• Case Study Workshop: What is your Business Object/Concept Model?

Ch6: Business Process Architecture: Value Streams: and an End-to-End view

• Stakeholder Journeys and Lifecycles
• Value Streams and Business Processes
• The Skeleton Process Architecture
• Deriving a value-focussed Process Architecture
• Using Business/Industry Frameworks
• Examples of real company Architectures
• Case study Workshop: What are your Value Streams and End-to-End Process Architecture?

Day (4)

Ch7: Alignment to Business Decisions and Business Rules

• Policies, Decisions and Business Rules and their alignment
• The Operational Decision Questions Hierarchy
• Case study Workshop: What are some key Decisions and Business Rules?

Ch8: Business Capabilities

• What is a Business Capability?
• BIZBOK view
• Capability Modeling
• Assuring unique non-redundant Capabilities
• The Burlton Hexagon to establish capability components
• Mapping Capabilities to Business Processes: where used
• Mapping to IT Enablers and Services
• Mapping to Human Skills, Competencies and Culture
• Case study Workshop: What are your Business Capabilities?
• Case study Workshop: How do your Capabilities Map to your Business Processes

Day (5)

Ch9: Business Performance Models

• Characteristics of Good Performance Indicators
• The new Balanced Scorecard
• Lagging and Leading Indicators
• Measurement Traceability to Strategic Objectives
• Measuring Operating Processes
• Case study Workshop: What is your Performance Scorecard?

Ch10:  Prioritization of Change: Heat Maps

• Evaluating Process, Information and Capability Value and Performance Gaps
• Heat Map Grids
• Pain – Gain Analysis for assessment of Capabilities, information and Processes
• The Burlton Framework for Resource Change Planning
• Defining Change Priorities
• Case study Workshop: What are your Business Process and Capability Priorities?

Day (6)

Ch11: Leveraging the Architecture into a Business Change Portfolio

• Using the Business Architecture Models in Business Change
• Cross Mapping Capabilities and Processes: Impact Analysis
• Defining the Portfolio of Process and Capability Changes
• Scoping a Change Project
• Building the Roadmap

Ch12: Sustaining the Architecture through Governance

• Governance Maturity Checklist
• Architecture Sustainment Framework
• Center of Excellence Support

Summary

• Knowledge Management and the Role of AI
• Choosing your approach in getting started
• Lessons Learned
• In class discussion on main takeaways