Articles

The Digital Business Architect: Lessons from the Field

Author(s):

Dean Heltemes

Senior Director, Ameriprise Financial

The other day I was contemplating what business capabilities were enabled by connecting a toaster to the Internet of Things. (Yes, this really exists. And no, I didn’t come up with an answer.) Clearly technology is having an impact on every aspect of our lives and many business architects now find themselves in a strange place: after years of trying to distance themselves from IT and technology and be seen as part of the business, now the business is trying to embrace technology and understand what a digital transformation could mean to their business model. So what is a business architect to do? Adapt!

Paradigm Shift

5 Steps to Get Your BPM Project on Stable Footing Out of The Gate

Author(s):

David Hamme

Managing Director, Ephesus Consulting

Is your improvement project failing? Depending upon which study you reference, roughly two thirds of projects fail to produce their promised outcomes. Such failures result in a tremendous waste of resources and even more unfortunately – lost opportunities to seize advantage over competitors. Looking deeper, we often find failure is almost preordained. Projects are pushed out of the chute armed with confusing directives and inadequate resources. Once a team is assigned to address an opportunity, invariably the first task is to translate leadership intentions into a realistic deliverable. Such translations can be overly challenging to make. In the name of expediency, project teams are routinely asked to run out on the ice before strapping on their ice cleats. Without stable footing, epitomized by a well-defined mission and clear field instructions, they lack the foundational necessities to hit the ground running.

Customer Experience is the key to Operational Excellence Success

Author(s):

Andrew Spanyi

Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

A September 2015 survey of 150 Operational Excellence (Op Ex) professionals found that 38% of respondents listed Customer Experience (CX) as their number one priority in Op Ex. That’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that nearly 4 out of 10 Op Ex professionals recognize that CSX is central to Op Ex success. The bad news is that 62% – don’t.

There’s no doubt that Op Ex success also relies on other factors such as leadership and culture. But if an organization doesn’t put customers first – they may find themselves optimizing to a decreasing share of the market. Op Ex professionals will recognize the importance of focusing on customer experience as it has been part of the lean movement since 1988.

The BPM Cathedral vs. Bazaar Model

Author(s):

Frank Teti

Digital Advisor / Manager, Capgemini Invent

When looking at BPM there appears to be two distinct worlds Pegasystems Inc. and one that is more standards-driven that includes vendors, such as, IBM, Appian, etc. BPM using Pegasystems’ PRPC versus BPM proscribed by this latter set of vendors represent two very different philosophies on how to implement BPM systems. However, I would say that the one thing that all vendors appear to agree with is that an enterprise-grade BPMS is a truly disruptive technology, since its tactical mission is usually to:

Extend the functionality of existing apps,
Enable disintermediation between applications,
Tightly-integrate processing gaps among disparate applications
Provide opportunistic business application behavior that takes advantage of new technologies and techniques in order to deliver superior functionality

Creating a Great Business Architecture Team

Author(s):

Whynde Kuehn

Principal, S2E Consulting Inc.

Business architecture team structure, composition and advancement is top of mind as organizations establish their own internal business architecture practices. In a previous article , we explored the structure of an effective business architecture team, with a focus on where business architects are positioned, how they are organized, and how they collaborate. In this article, we will explore some of the most frequently asked questions related to team composition, including who to hire, how to find and create great business architects, and how many to hire.

Who Do We Hire?

Blockchain for Organizational Culture: Part II

Author(s):

Dr. Setrag Khoshafian

Principal and Chief Scientist, Khosh Consulting

[In 2017], I attended the Blockchain World Conference and found the main focal points of the event to be quite interesting: The case studies and transformational messages were pervasive. Decentralization and its impact on organizations, as well as business...

Measuring Business Architecture Capability Maturity

Author(s):

Simona Lovin

Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives, Leidos

Whether aware of it or not, an organization functions because it is made up of parts that are designed to work together in unison to accomplish the overall mission of the organization. These parts (employees, departments, project teams, competencies, processes, products and so on), taken together, form the business architecture of the complex social system which is the organization. The Business Architecture capability, on the other hand, reflects the organization’s intentional efforts to establish a formalized competency supported by dedicated people, processes, procedures, and technology, which expressly serves the purpose of aligning the strategic and operational goals and processes in the organization. It is safe to say, therefore, that every organization has a business architecture, but not necessarily a Business Architecture capability.

An All-Services Approach to Modeling Business

Author(s):

Doug McDavid

Mr., DougMcDavid Enterprises

“Man is the model-making organism par excellence … Myths, philosophical systems, and science represent different types of models of what social scientists call cognitive systems. The purpose of the model is to enable the user to do a better job in handling the enormous complexity of life. By using models, we see and test how things work and can even predict how things will go in the future. The effectiveness of a model can be judged by how well it works, as well as how consistent it is as a mechanical or philosophical system.” Edward T. Hall – Beyond Culture

Introduction

The ability to explore business issues through models lies at the heart of the business architecture discipline. Business architecture models capture the essence of the business, how the parts relate to one another, and how the business interacts with external entities and forces.

A BPM Team or BPM Stakeholders?

Author(s):

Shelley Sweet

Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

There are many ways to ‘do’ business process improvement projects. It’s best if the company has a methodology from BPM, Lean, Six Sigma, Reengineering or some other methodology. Here’s the one I use, starting with selecting the project and ending with monitoring and sustaining the project; ‘doing’ the process improvement project means completing the section in the middle from Chartering and Staffing to Implementation Plan.

Companies use a number of methods to conduct the BPM project from using a Six Sigma Black Belt as an expert, to having a Business Analyst do interviews with subject matter experts and developing the as is model and to be map, to using different half day workshops for different phases of the process with the appropriate stakeholders. The one I highly recommend and have used with over 100 different processes is a team-based method.

DMN Adoption – Barriers and How to Break Through

Author(s):

Brian Stucky

Managing Director, Business Decision Management, Allegiance Advisory Group

Industry guru Bruce Silver recently posted essays discussing the parallels between the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and the more recent Decision Model and Notation (DMN). Both standards, as he notes, were created with the goal of business user acceptance. In his view BPMN has been a success because it provided a clear, business-friendly way for users to communicate, and (with BPMN 2.0) established a means to tie the modeling and execution language. It was truly “What You Model is What You Execute.”

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