Time to become a Business Architect?

As organisations embrace rapid and radical digitisation, new demands are placed on individuals, and new skill-sets rise into popularity.

For those in traditional Business Analyst and Project Management roles, one of the most opportunity-laden directions to evolve into is Business Architecture.

Business Architecture, as one of the Enterprise Architecture domains, regularly features on lists of hottest, most in-demand IT skills. It’s a natural extension of Business Analysis, for those looking to elevate their career to a more strategic level.

Business Architecture is defined as the formalised description of an organisation; its essential capabilities and how it uses them to realise its strategic intent and objectives.

The purpose of Business Architecture is to define the future state business and operating model, develop a roadmap to get from the current to the desired future state, establish a plan to achieve the business value from the change, and manage the progress along the way to achieve desired business outcomes with pace, certainty and agility.

In this way, Business Architects support their business executives and organisational change leaders, fusing business acumen with technology vision, to propel the organisation forward into a new digital future.

Accomplished Business Architects need to have very specific certifications in Enterprise Architecture frameworks, techniques, and tools – such as TOGAF, and Open Certified Architect, for example. Complementing this, Business Architects are strategically-minded, understand business fundamentals, and generally have well-developed leadership and executive engagement skills.

With this in mind, Real IRM has recently designed a new foundational course to facilitate an individual’s progression from Business Analyst, Project Manager, or indeed any other related field, into the arena of Business Architecture.

In ‘Introduction to Business Architecture’, attendees learn the basics of establishing a Business Architecture practice and capability, and gain a broad overview of the most essential frameworks.

These frameworks include Zachman, TOGAF, Chris Reynolds’ 5 Views, The Business Architecture Guild’s BIZBOK, Whelan & Meaden’s Business Architecture Value Creation Model, and The Open Group’s Open Business Architecture standard.

From this high-level understanding of how Business Architecture can add value to one’s organisation, attendees can then progress into more practical areas so as to understand all that is encompassed in the actual work, in the context of their own organisation.

As businesses reposition themselves for digital transformation, new ecosystems and new markets appear. As we move from manual to automated, from process efficiency to customer-centricity, and from products to platforms, a myriad of new challenges emerges.

Business Architects will be critical in interpreting these changing macro environments and market demands, and in defining the target states and transitional roadmaps required for the organisation to thrive in the digital age.

There’s never been a more opportune, more exciting time, to embark on the journey into Business Architecture!