As Enterprises are starting to adopt Services-Oriented Architecture, they are currently in the process of transforming both their Business and IT organizations. In this context there has been a discussion on the topic of Business Architecture with a basic consensus that Business architecture is the link between business and technology (or IT) but there isn’t any clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of this position. Nor is there clear descriptions of the practical aspects of what exactly are the Business Architect’s activities and how should enterprises get started with this function. The objective of this paper to help clarify these points from a practitioner’s point of view as well as help organization kick-start the Business Architecture function.

Table of Contents:

Industry Context
Enterprise Value Discipline
How Organizations Learn

Introduction to Business Architecture
Business Architecture Defined
Business Architecture Responsibilities

Getting Started with Business Architecture
Adopting Services-Oriented Architecture
Business Driven SOA Planning Framework
Business Architecture Governance
Enterprise Architecture Governance
Enterprise Architecture Organization Structure

Proven Approach to Business Architecture Blueprinting
Developing the Business Architecture Blueprint

Conclusion

Over the last few months I have had the opportunity to talk to some of the IT organization in the silicon valley and am happy to report that most of them are either in the process or have already adopted SOA. By adopting SOA - it has forced the IT leadership to focus on their core competencies. Most of them are primarily focused on the fundamentals such as:

• Selecting Strategic Projects
• Aligning Project Portfolio of IT Strategy
• IT Organization Structure to for enabling Business Agility
• Establishing Enterprise Architecture Team
• Blueprinting Information Architecture and BPM and
• Service Engineering Process

What was surprising to me was that even though most of the us early adopters have shared our key learning and best practices on blogs such as this, most IT organizations are still struggling to focus on their core competencies - such as defining the roles and responsibilities of each teams, separations of development and support teams, communicating IT goals to all teams, establishing Enterprise Architecture teams and defining and enforcing the application life cycle (services life cycle come next).

If this is the state in the heart of the hi-tech industry, woder how it is out there in other industries? It would great to get the feedback on what the rest of you are observing .