11.4.5 Impact on Knowledge Areas
This section explains how specific business analysis practices within business architecture are mapped to business analysis tasks and practices as defined by the BABOK® Guide. This section describes how each knowledge area is applied or modified within the business architecture discipline.
Each knowledge area lists techniques relevant to a business architecture perspective. BABOK® Guide techniques are found in the Techniques chapter of the BABOK® Guide. Other business analysis techniques are not found in the Techniques chapter of the BABOK® Guide but are considered to be particularly useful to business analysts working in the discipline of business architecture. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of techniques but rather to highlight the types of techniques used by business analysts while performing the tasks within the knowledge area.
.1 Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
During Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring, the discipline of business architecture requires business analysts to understand the organization’s:
- strategy and direction,
- operating model and value proposition,
- current business and operational capabilities,
- stakeholders and their points of engagement,
- plans for growth, governance, and planning processes,
- culture and environment, and
- capacity for change.
Once these elements are understood the business analyst can then develop an understanding of which architectural viewpoints are relevant to the analysis.
Governance planning and monitoring activities primarily focus on:
- selecting which projects or initiatives will provide the most benefit in achieving the business strategies and outcomes, and
- determining which frameworks or models exist or are utilized within the organization.
BABOK® Guide Techniques
- Acceptance and Evaluation Criteria (p. 217)
- Brainstorming (p. 227)
- Business Capability Analysis (p. 230)
- Decision Analysis (p. 261)
- Estimation (p. 271)
- Functional Decomposition (p. 283)
- Interviews (p. 290)
- Item Tracking (p. 294)
- Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) (p. 297)
- Non-Functional Requirements Analysis (p. 302)
- Organizational Modelling (p. 308)
- Process Modelling (p. 318)
- Reviews (p. 326)
- Risk Analysis and Management (p. 329)
- Roles and Permissions Matrix (p. 333)
- Root Cause Analysis (p. 335)
- Scope Modelling (p. 338)
- Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas (p. 344)
- Survey or Questionnaire (p. 350)
- Use Cases and Scenarios (p. 356)
- User Stories (p. 359)
Other Business Analysis Techniques
- Business Process Architecture
- Capability Map
- Project Portfolio Analysis
- Service-oriented Analysis
.2 Elicitation and Collaboration
Business analysts working in the discipline of business architecture typically deal with a great deal of ambiguity and uncertainty. When undertaking Elicitation and Collaboration tasks, business analysts consider changes in organizational direction based on external and internal forces and changes in marketplace environment. The types of changes can frequently be predicted, but external market pressures frequently make the pace of the change unpredictable.
As business architecture requires many inputs from across the organization, access to (and the availability of) stakeholders is critical to success. Business analysts elicit inputs such as strategy, value, existing architectures, and performance metrics.
Advocacy for the organization’s strategy is central to the communication strategy of business architects. As members of various steering committees and advisory groups, business architects utilize formal communication channels within projects, initiatives, and operational groups to communicate the organization’s strategy, explain the organizational context, and advocate alignment with the strategy.
Ensuring stakeholders understand and support the organization’s strategy is an essential function within the discipline of business architecture. Business architects may impose scope and constraints on a project or initiative as a means to ensure the activity aligns to the organization’s strategy, which may be viewed unfavorably. It is the role of the business architect to bridge the needs and desires of individual stakeholders, projects, and operational groups with the context and understanding of the organizational goals and strategy.
The business architect’s goal is to optimize the enterprise’s goals and strategy, and discourage activities that achieve a narrow goal at the cost of sub-optimizing the entire objective. This is an exercise in both elicitation and in collaboration.
The business architect acquires a deep understanding of the strategy, drivers, motivations, and aspirations of the organization and those of the stakeholders.
Once this level of understanding is achieved, the business architect collaborates with all levels of the organization including senior leadership, managers, the project management office (PMO), product owners, project managers, various business analysts, solution architects, and IT personnel to bridge gaps in understanding and communicating the importance of alignment with organizational strategy. Facilitating effective collaboration requires that the business architect is able to understand the wide variety of perspectives and contexts from which each stakeholder operates. The business architect must also be able to communicate with each of these stakeholders in a language that is mutually understood and supported.
BABOK® Guide Techniques
- Brainstorming (p. 227)
- Document Analysis (p. 269)
- Focus Groups (p. 279)
- Functional Decomposition (p. 283)
- Glossary (p. 286)
- Interface Analysis (p. 287)
- Interviews (p. 290)
- Item Tracking (p. 294)
- Observation (p. 305)
- Prototyping (p. 323)
- Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas (p. 344)
- Survey or Questionnaire (p. 350)
- Workshops (p. 363)
Other Business Analysis Techniques
- none
.3 Requirements Life Cycle Management
It is essential that business analysts working in the discipline of business architecture have executive support and agreement of the work to be undertaken. An architecture review board comprised of senior executives with decision-making powers can review and assess changes to the business architecture. This group will often also engage in portfolio management by making decisions regarding the investment in and prioritization of change based on their impact to business outcomes and strategy.
Business analysts working in the discipline of business architecture understand how projects impact the business architecture on an ongoing basis and work to continually expand, correct, or improve the business architecture. They also identify possible emerging changes in both internal and external situations (including market conditions), and decide on how to incorporate these changes into the business architecture of the organization.
BABOK® Guide Techniques
- Balanced Scorecard (p. 223)
- Benchmarking and Market Analysis (p. 226)
- Business Capability Analysis (p. 230)
- Collaborative Games (p. 243)
- Data Modelling (p. 256)
- Decision Analysis (p. 261)
- Estimation (p. 271)
- Interface Analysis (p. 287)
- Item Tracking (p. 294)
- Lessons Learned (p. 296)
- Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) (p. 297)
- Organizational Modelling (p. 308)
- Process Analysis (p. 314)
- Process Modelling (p. 318)
- Reviews (p. 326)
- Risk Analysis and Management (p. 329)
- Roles and Permissions Matrix (p. 333)
- Root Cause Analysis (p. 335)
- Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas (p. 344)
- SWOT Analysis (p. 353)
Other Business Analysis Techniques
- Archimate®
- Business Process Architecture
- Business Value Modelling
- Capability Map
- Enterprise Core Diagram
- Project Portfolio Analysis
- Roadmap
- Service-oriented Analysis
- Value Mapping
