Case Study: Business Architecture at United Airlines

With over 25 years experience building and creating professional communities, Gregg Rock is recognized as an industry leader in professional training and education vital to helping enterprise organizations support their transformation initiatives. His work has been recognized in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Financial Times, CIO Magazine, and New York Times. Throughout his career Gregg has developed communities, hosted executive networking forums and the formation of advisory boards on topics ranging from IT security and outsourcing to multimedia and Y2K, but is most widely associated with his accomplishments in the areas of Business Process Management (BPM), Digital Business (DBiz), Business Architecture (BA), and Cloud Computing. BPM in particular is a widely accepted approach for designing enterprise organizational and information systems. This focus on process-related skills is creating demand for BPM content, collaboration, and training resources by corporations—a niche Gregg has spent years to fill. In 1997, Gregg founded BrainStorm Group and the network of BrainStorm Communities, consisting of discipline-specific web portals for BPM, BA, and SOA practitioners to network and receive education, professional training online and through live in-person events. This has enabled over 100,000 practitioners from over 125 countries to collaborate and share best practices, online and face-to-face. BrainStorm Communities feature a comprehensive suite of member services including newsletters, discussion groups, blogs, virtual and live events, live and online training, certificate programs, and professional certification. During his tenure, Gregg has produced more than 100 industry events in North America, South America, EMEA, and Australia attended by over 300,000 professionals. He led the development of the Certified Business Process Management Professional program. Harnessing the collective intelligence of leading BPM subject matter experts, this certification establishes an objective evaluation of a BPM professional’s knowledge, skill, and ability. He recently led the launch of BrainStorm's newest Community, focused on Digital Business and Transformation - DBizInstitute.org. Gregg also earned his private pilot license in 1991 and remains an active member of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). When not flying, he’s active in his community and enjoys coaching little league, soccer, and lacrosse for his children.

Jeff is a senior business and technology executive, with extensive expertise and leadership in innovation, strategy development, business architecture, and organizational transformation. He has substantial consulting and corporate experience working with senior leadership to set direction, build consensus, and translate business objectives into effective action. Jeff is an internationally recognized thought leader in business architecture, strategy execution, and organizational transformation. He frequently speaks, writes, and teaches seminars on these topics Jeff currently writes the blog, The Business Architect, chairs The Business Architect’s Roundtable, is a member of the Business Architecture Guild’s advisory board, and is the Editorial Director for the Business Architecture Institute.

Diane Le Beau is the Director of Business Architecture at United Airlines. Diane, along with another architect established the company’s first business architecture team in 2008. She is responsible for business capability and strategy alignment, transformation/integration activities as it relates to business readiness and impact analysis as well as portfolio and business engagement. Prior to her recent position, Diane worked in operations, managing Customer Service at one of United’s Hubs responsible for customer satisfaction, employee engagement and continuous improvement over three separate airport terminals.