What is Enterprise Architecture?
The Enterprise Architecture profession exists to help decision-makers drive effective change.
Enterprise Architecture is a general term for the procedures used by organizations to improve their organization. Business operations, organization, software, and IT infrastructure in order to satisfy business needs. Its fundamental aim is to offer the structure, resources, and viewpoints needed to understand the best change. Then move a firm from its present state to the position it wants to be in. It all comes down to creating an organizational structure and business infrastructure based on vision, purpose, and strategic intent.
Additionally, enterprise architecture lessens complexity, information silos, business risk related to IT expenditures, and so on. Enterprise architecture is broader than business architecture.
Enterprise architecture is made up of many enterprise architecture domains. The Enterprise Architecture includes the business architecture, the IT architecture, and the security architecture. Either an enterprise architect or a domain architecture will cover each domain.
What is Business Architecture?
Business architecture is a method that allows us to better understand organizations and integrate their tactical needs with their strategic goals. Its primary goal is to guarantee that all implementations, modifications, and improvements to business procedures and operations support can be linked back to business strategy. Planning, organizing, and putting an organization's business objectives into practice are key.
Process cycle durations are shortened, operating expenses are cut, performance is increased, etc. thanks to business architecture. It aids in the efficient operation of several organizational units, both inside and outside of the firm. Compared to corporate architecture, it is less information-centric and more process-centric. Additionally, it is theoretically a component of enterprise architecture and does not preclude it.
Business architects specialize in the business architecture domain.
Weak business architects translate decision-makers’ desires to terms the rest of the EA Team can understand. Real Business Architects advise decision-makers in selecting the future state and the change that will occur. Great business architects, likewise, work seamlessly with the rest of the EA Team to ensure the desired changes are delivered across the business and IT.
Enterprise Architect vs Business Architect - What are the Key Differences?
Both experts often work together to assist business leaders. They often collaborate to match the company's technology assets with its essential business procedures, like data collection or order shipment. The business architect is very focused on 'the business,' and helps develop an organization's financial objectives, business-to-business connections, and workflow standards.
Misunderstandings of Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture
The most common misunderstanding is to limit the enterprise architecture to Information Technology. Then to set up a distinction between business and enterprise architecture. The enterprise architecture covers all domains - business, information systems, technology, and security.
The concept of enterprise architecture goes beyond technology. The business, or organization, including the environment in which it functions, is what the term suggests.
The most common misunderstanding of business architecture is to limit it to the activities an organization performs. Business architecture encompasses more than simply processes. While important, procedures are not the only element that makes up a business architecture.
Enterprise architecture's main objective is to offer a plan for organizational restructuring and transformation. In order to achieve strategic goals, procedures are essentially designed holistically.
Business architecture, on the other hand, is best viewed as a blueprint offering an organized, model-driven approach to creating and running a company. Understanding the organization's business strategy and value streams, as well as the organizational structure, operational procedures, and supporting data, is provided by business architecture.
Business architecture doesn't merely specify the results; it also aids in their realization.
By combining organizational, procedural, and informational components, Business Architects offers a corporate knowledge of how company strategy and value streams are operationalized. The Business Architecture makes it possible to achieve the strategic goals; it does not determine the strategy.
Enterprise Architect vs Business Architect - Roles and Responsibilities
Prior to translating the business strategy and operations of the organization into the information technology framework, enterprise architects interact with executives or clients. They may more easily form collaborations across enterprises by using the technology and data capture standards used in businesses that are comparable to their own. The required programs and applications are often included in the design, and these experts build partnerships with dependable suppliers who can subsequently provide the most recent software. Finally, they develop a technical framework that is dynamic and scalable for the business.
Finding gaps or issues with the present technology, recommending software and hardware improvements, and creating a data model for monitoring and identifying trends in data gathered through business activities are all duties of an enterprise architect. For new customers, they also offer installation and how-to manuals.
A business architect may assist in creating corporate rules and goals for businesses that are just getting started or seeking to reinvent themselves. These experts have a beneficial impact on the workflow by building effective business procedures and strengthening the connections between departments and roles. They also choose what data will be shared among the company's departments and how to handle and arrange business information like payroll and invoices. Additionally, they play a crucial role in ensuring that the company's new offerings of goods and services follow its strategic business strategy.
A business architect's duties include assisting department leaders to make sure resources are allocated as needed, tracking down external influencers, defining the company's purpose in terms of its primary functions and goals, and researching emerging market trends and standards to incorporate them into the business plan.
Enterprise Architect vs Business Architect - Working Together
These days, hiring a Business Architect who reports to IT is a common course of action. This architect should have a broad understanding of people and technology, not just business. Even the TOGAF Framework certification is a requirement for these Business Architects. But because IT does not need business architects, business analysts who deal with requirements and process modeling, are often assigned to business architect positions and act as translators.
To coordinate the Enterprise Architect in a cross-functional effort, the next option is to hire a Business Architect who does report to the enterprise architecture team. A Business Architect must, however, be skilled in architecture, and carry a deep understanding of developing a business through business architecture models. We link the architecture position to a certain mentality. The best business architects are predisposed to analysis, synthesis, and systematic thinking in search of patterns, principles, rules, and general abstraction.
However, the Enterprise Architecture objective is still very important. They must integrate all varying enterprise perspectives and diagrams into a single enterprise blueprint. The IT Enterprise and Business Architecture techniques must thus be appropriately combined and integrated in order to offer the overall enterprise design. The enterprise-level architects should also think about integrating all enterprise-level activities that deliver process modeling, high-quality processes and products, non-IT schematics, and engineering disciplines that guarantee the operation's trimming through process measurement and adjustment, as well as security, availability, and enterprise scaling.
In conclusion, the chief enterprise architect should be situated higher in the organizational structure to oversee business architecture and combine it with technological and human capital architecture. Instead of just the IT blueprint or solutions, this architect should make sure the entire enterprise's plan is provided. The architect should make sure that the enterprise as a whole, not just IT, is the audience.
Instead of relying on the talent of a single person, one has to have an overarching strategy and structure to direct efforts toward the same goal. Because it has endured through two decades of enterprise architecture, the TOGAF Standard is frequently suggested. Enterprise Architects and Business Architects alike use this comprehensive enterprise architecture framework.
Closing thoughts on Enterprise Architect vs. Business Architect
Basically, it all boils down to a simple description – Business Architecture is a part of Enterprise Architecture. EA focuses on what information the organization knows, while BA focuses on what the organization does and needs to do. These two types of architectures have some overlap in terms of responsibilities and roles, but – they are both vital for digital transformation and should spend quite a bit of time working together.
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