In practical terms, the Business Architecture is also often necessary as a means of

demonstrating the business value of subsequent Technical Architecture work to key

stakeholders, and the return on investment to those stakeholders from supporting and
participating in the subsequent work.
Business architects should also determine the scope of the business.
In the context of a business, technology has a wide range of potential effects on
management:
Reduced costs of operations.
New product and new market creation.
Reorganized administrative operations.

A business architecture is a part of an enterprise architecture related to corporate business, and
the documents and diagrams that describe the architectural structure of that business. People who
build business architecture are known as business architects.
Business architecture is the bridge between the enterprise business model and enterprise strategy
on one side, and the business functionality of the enterprise on the other side.
The term "business architecture" is, first of all, an architecture and used to refer to an
architectural organization of an enterprise or a business unit, architectural model or profession. A
formal definition of the first meaning is defined by the Object Management Group's Business
Architecture Working Group as follows:
"A blueprint of the enterprise that provides a common understanding of the organization
and is used to align strategic objectives and tactical demands."
[1]

Business Architecture articulates the functional structure of a enterprise in terms of its business
services and business information. One of the major outcomes of Business Architecture is a set
of business capability models. The business capability is able to perform certain business
functionality and deliver business results or values under certain circumstances. The business
capability is provided by business services that state "what" the organization does while the
business processes implement business functionality and define "how" the organization can
execute its capabilities. A business capability is considered as "defined" when its business
functionality is identified and implementation resources are reserved.
By following the governance and articulating business information, the business architecture
considers all internal and external actors to an enterprise (including its customers, suppliers, and
regulators), to ensure that flow in and out of the enterprise are captured
Different views of an organization[edit]
In order to develop an integrated view of an enterprise, many different views of an organization
are typically developed. The key views of the enterprise within the business architecture are:
[2]

Business Strategy view : captures the strategic goals that drive an organization forward.
The goals may be decomposed into various tactical approaches for achieving these goals
and for providing traceability through the organization. These strategic goals are mapped
to metrics that provide ongoing evaluation of how successfully the organization is
achieving its goals.
Business Capabilities view : describes the business functional abilities expressed via
business services of an enterprise and the sections of the organization that would be able
performing those functions. This view further distinguishes between customer-facing
functions, supplier-related functions, core business execution functions, and business
management functions.
Business Knowledge view : establishes the shared semantics (e.g., customer, order, and
supplier) within an organization and relationships between those semantics (e.g.,
customer name, order date, supplier name). These semantics form the vocabulary that the
organization relies upon to communicate and structure the understanding of the areas they
operate within.
Business Operational view : defines the set of strategic, core and support operational
structures that transcend functional and organizational boundaries. It also sets the
boundary of the enterprise by identifying and describing external entities such as
customers, suppliers, and external systems that interact with the business. The operational
structures describe which resources and controls are involved. The lowest operational
level describes the manual and automated tasks that make up workflow.
Organizational view : captures the relationships among roles, capabilities and business
units, the decomposition of those business units into subunits, and the internal or external
management of those units.
Disciplined approach[edit]
Business Architecture is a disciplined approach to realise business models and to serve as a
business foundation of the enterprise to enhance accountability and improve decision-making.
Business Architecture's value proposition, unlike other disciplines is to increase functional
effectiveness by mapping and modeling the business to the organization's business vision and
strategic goals.
Mapping identifies gaps between the current architectural state and target state, which
affects underlying services, processes, people, and tools.
Modeling discovers business requirements in the area of interest including stakeholders,
business entities and their relationships, and business integration points.
Business Strategy [edit]
Business Architecture directly realizes business strategy. It is the foundation for subsequent
architectures (strategy embedding), where it is detailed into various aspects and disciplines. The
business strategy can consist of elements like strategy statements, organizational goals and
objectives, generic business models, etc. The strategic statements are analyzed and arranged
hierarchically, through techniques like qualitative hierarchical cluster analysis. Based on this
hierarchy the initial business architecture is realized, using general organizational structuring
methods and business administration theory, like theories on assets and resources and theories on
structuring economic activity. Based on the business architecture the construction of the
organization takes shape (figure 1: strategy embedding). During the strategy formulation phase
and as a result of the design of the business architecture, the business strategy gets better
formulated and understood as well as made more internally consistent.
The business architecture forms a significantly better basis for subsequent architectures than the
separate statements themselves. The business architecture gives direction to organizational
aspects, such as the organizational structuring (in which the responsibilities of the business
domains are assigned to individuals/business units in the organization chart or where a new
organization chart is drawn) and the administrative organization (describing for instance the
financial reconciliation mechanisms between business domains). Assigning the various business
domains to their owners (managers) also helps the further development of other architectures,
because now the managers of these domains can be involved with a specific assigned
responsibility. This leads to increased involvement of top-level managers by making them
domain-owners and well aware of their role. Detailed portions of business domains can be
developed based on the effort and support of the domain-owners involved. Business architecture
therefore is a very helpful pre-structuring device for the development, acceptance and
implementation of subsequent architectures.
The perspectives on the design of subsequent architectures are more common: Information
Technology Architecture and technical architecture. The various parts (functions, features and
concepts) of the business architecture act as a compulsory starting point for the different
subsequent architectures. Business architecture models shed light on the scantily elaborated
relationships between business strategy and business design and organization throughout the
enterprise.

What is Business Technology Management and how does it relate to
Enterprise Architecture?
Business Technology Management (BTM) is not a methodology but I would say a concept, or
eventually the aggregation of several guidelines and techniques. It is also described as a
management science which aims to unify business and technology business strategies with the
aim of extracting the full potential value of business technology solutions. In a nutshell, it
allows you to unify business and technology decision making. Sounds familiar?
Pragmatically it corresponds to a group of various services intended to help businesses
communities. BTM can include different methods such as IT planning, Project and Portfolio
management (e.g. PMI, Prince 2), Balance Scorecards, Business support, Database services,
disaster recovery, network management, security, document service, and frameworks. BTM
delivers a set of guiding principles known as capabilities and defines the expected
characteristics of an organization according to five levels of a maturity mode like CMMi. While
these methods/methodologies have recognized strengths, they represent a piecemeal
approach. There is a need to integrate these capabilities to achieve that strategic business
technology alignment because most of these methods do not really focus on the goals and
objectives of an enterprise. Balance Scorecard is a performance measurement methodology,
Six Sigma or Lean are quality improvement methodologies mostly used in manufacturing, and
so on...
BTM may sound like an evolved IT governance concept, where business and IT are in tune in
an effort to support and realise the enterprise strategy. But does it really differ from an
Enterprise Architecture which sometimes may also be considered as being the glue between
various methods/methodologies?
Some questions may quickly arise...Is BTM just better IT Governance or simply a different
way of naming an Enterprise Architecture? And does TOGAF support BTM? BTM like
Enterprise Architecture aligns activities which remain pure business and some pure
technology, but most activities intertwine business and technology such that they become
indistinguishable. It also guides and supports enterprises to these various states.
The precepts of Business Technology Management have been developed and refined by BTM
experts working with such think tanks as the BTM Institute and the International Institute of
Business Technologies (IIBT).


Business Technology Management addresses four critical dimensions of enterprise-wide
strategy
1. Process
This first dimension refers to the institution of a set of robust, flexible and repeatable
processes, broadly defined as:
General quality of Business Practice: Doing the right things
Efficiency: Doing things efficiently, quickly with little redundancy
Effectiveness: Doing things well
The TOGAF 9 ADM is an example of such processes with its associated governance
framework.
2. Organisation
Management processes are more likely to succeed when it refers to the establishment of
appropriate organisational structures, establishing a structure in which every member
understands the scope and responsibilities of his or her role, and decision rights. Something
perfectly addressed during the Phases Preliminary and A of TOGAF.
Organizational structures may include
Participative bodies involving senior level business and technology participants on a part-
time but routine basis (e.g. Business Technology Investment Board). TOGAF suggests the
creation of an architecture board who participate with the key business stakeholders.
Centralized bodies requiring specialized dedicated technology staff (e.g. PMO).
Need-based bodies involving rotational assignments dealing with particular efforts (e.g.
PMO, Project Management teams).
Both last bodies would be identified during Phase F: Migration Planning and Phase G:
Implementation Governance
3. Information
Valid, effective, timely provision of information is a prerequisite in effective decision making.
Information must be delivered in a way that is comprehensible to non specialists as well. Data
and metrics must be available. This would be addressed by the Communication Plan defined
in the TOGAF Architecture Visions phase taking into account the stakeholders needs, the
communication mechanisms and timetable. Measurements and metrics may be included for
strategic and operational objectives.
4. Technology
Effective technology can help connect the other three dimensions. The idea is that
technology plays a vital role in all processes and can enable timely information sharing,
improve co-ordination between members of an organisation and makes processes easier to
execute. This covers automation of tasks, reporting, analytics and integration between
management systems. In Enterprise Architecture, this would be covered by the
interoperability requirements identified by the business and the identification of appropriate
solutions in the TOGAF Phases E and F, such as BPM suites and BI products.

Business Technology Management (BTM) Capabilities
A BTM capability is defined as a competency achieved by combining each of the above
dimensions and creating repeatable management processes that are executed with the
appropriate organizational structures, using an effective information architecture.
Business Technology Management defines 17 of these specific capabilities, each grouped into
one of four functional areas.
Governance and Organisation: These capabilities are focused on the enterprises CIO and
business executives concerned with enterprise wide governance of business technology. It
ensures that business technology decisions are effectively identified and executed, meet the
needs of the business, manages the risk and give proper consideration to regulatory, legal and
industry requirements. TOGAF addresses all of this in the Preliminary Phase and the
Architecture Vision, where an enterprise architecture governance framework is created.
Managing Technology Investments : This sits with PMO and business executives who are
concerned with the selection and execution of the right business technologies initiatives and
fulfil their objectives. The enterprise understands its current IT capabilities, what is currently
available and what it is working on for the future. This is equally addressed during the Phase
F: Migration Planning.
Strategy & Planning: These capabilities ensure that the CIO and business executives make the
most appropriate moves to synchronise technology and business, both reducing complexity
and planning for future developments. Enterprise Architecture and TOGAF 9 undoubtedly
support these capabilities; you may refer to the previous article How Strategic Planning
relates to Enterprise Architecture.
Strategic Enterprise Architecture: This capability must be developed to support this
functional area, ensure that appropriate information and documentation exists that can
describe current and future business technology environment within the enterprise. As we
observed, TOGAF as an Enterprise Architecture framework includes most of the capabilities
mentioned above!
The BTM Maturity Model
A maturity model describes how well an enterprise performs a particular set of activities.
These capabilities are useless without a method by which to measure their effectiveness. The
BTM Maturity model is aligned with the de-facto standard from CMMi and use the five levels of
maturity of all the four dimensions. Here again the Architecture Capability Maturity Model
from TOGAF 9 may be used to evaluate these capacities. We would identify the area most in
need for improvement.
Level 1: enterprises execute some strategic business technology management processes in
ad-hoc way. These enterprises typically manage processes in a simple task-based manner.
Level 2: enterprises attempt to assemble information for major decisions, and refer to IT on
decisions for technology implications.

Level 3: enterprises are functional in BTM.

Level 4: enterprises have achieved full BTM implementation. Their capabilities ensure that
there is strong alignment between business and technology decision making.

Level 5: enterprises have achieved the Holy Grail of BTM. They are good enough to know
when to change the rules to maintain strategic advantages over competitors.
To implement its business strategy, the enterprise requires particular operational capabilities
as described above and clearly it appears that Business Technology Management can be
supported by Enterprise Architecture. TOGAF 9 is in reality addressing all of these 17 BTM
capabilities grouped in functional areas, identified by the four dimensions and work as a
management framework to clarify required enterprise business needs. Companies having
implemented BTM should consider using TOGAF 9 as the way of rightfully pursuing alignment
of technology with the business and support a Business-Agile enterprise
- See more at: http://sergethorn.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-business-technology-
management.html#sthash.tMZCFQwG.dpuf